The first time I was in an in-patient locked psychiatric unit, I was overwhelmed by the amount of suffering I saw in the people there. While conversations about mental health are fairly common, the experience and suffering of serious mental illness – of psychosis, detachment from reality and life-threatening impulsivity – were completely new for…
Take up the Sword of the Spirit” St Paul tells us, in order to “stand against the wiles of the devil.” October, the month of the Rosary, recalls how this prayer, entrusted to St Dominic by Our Lady, became the Church’s spiritual weapon. Every Dominican still wears the rosary where a medieval knight would wear…
Some Sundays and weekdays, I slip quietly into the chapel of the Poor Clare convent in Galway for Mass. There is something profoundly moving about beginning the Lord’s Day in such stillness, surrounded by women whose entire lives are given to prayer. Sitting in their simple chapel, I often sense that heaven is nearer than…
Those Pharisees! They keep showing up at awkward moments in the narrative of the Gospel – those pesky taskmasters. Like the bad guy in a play, or those baddies in beloved Christmas pantomimes, trying to foil goodness! Wouldn’t they just leave Jesus alone, cop themselves on and get over themselves?! You want to shake them…
Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Ps 34 (33); 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14 Two men went up to the temple to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector uke 18:9 Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: Luke 18:10 “Two men went up…
Q: In families that are suffering from generational curses or that are involved in a lot of occult practices, why doesn’t baptism free their infants from the power of demons? A: The short answer is that I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that baptism doesn’t do this. Often when people think of exorcism, what…
In her autobiography The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day shares how she once prayed at a low time in her life. Dorothy Day, as you know, grew up without faith. An intellectual, moving in Marxist and anti-church circles, she entered her twenties convinced that if anyone had the courage to look life square in the eye,…
Exodus 17:8-13 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2 Luke 18:1-8 How does one obtain an identity card, a passport, or a certificate of good conduct? You submit an application, attach the required documents, and wait. But what about gaining access to a good hospital, finding decent employment, or securing social housing? Is it enough to file the…
Jesus told his disciples a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. Prayer is a mystery. Today we are being taught about the necessity of intercessory prayer and persevering in order not to lose heart- to pray every day. The examples of Moses with uplifted arms and the widow’s relentless pursuit of…
Why did early Christianity alight on the ideal of virginity, when an intelligent or even just a suspicious Roman could see that its adoption would undermine the very fabric of ancient society?” That’s a comment from historian Kate Cooper and it poses some questions worth examining. Does the single state, celibacy, (vowed or otherwise) undermine…
Fr John McCarthy
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Fr Dominik Domagala