What the Knock apparition teaches us about being bearers of light One of the outstanding features of the Knock apparition, to those who saw it, was its brilliance. The apparition occurred on August 21st, 1879, as the evening was beginning to darken in the relentless rain. The figures were described as “all lit up”…
I was organising some personal notes the other day, to updated my schedule for the next few weeks, and I saw this little note on my calendar: ‘St Michael’s novena – September 20 to September 29’. That – combined with a conversation we had in the office about miracles and St Michael’s Feast Day taking…
Readings: Amos 8:4-7 1 Timothy 2:1-8 Luke 16:1-13 On the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, in the prophet Amos, we read about dishonesty, and from St Paul, about prayers for rulers. In the Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the dishonest steward. Surprisingly, He praises him. What is the common denominator of all these…
Eight centuries ago, St Francis of Assisi composed a poem that remains familiar today, inspiring hymns, art, and the titles of two of the late Pope Francis’ teaching documents on integral ecology. The Canticle of the Creatures includes tributes to ‘Brother Sun,’ ‘Sister Moon and Stars,’ ‘Brother Wind’ and ‘Sister Water,’ all of whom give…
“The support of my parish and family carried me all the way to ordination,” hears Pedro Esteva It takes a village to raise a priest,” said Rev. Tiernan Burke, reflecting on the long journey which recently brought him to the transitional diaconate – just one year away from full priesthood. Now 40, Rev. Burke described…
My father died when I was twenty-three, a seminarian, green, still learning about life. It’s hard to lose your father at any age, and my grief was compounded by the fact that I had just begun to appreciate what he had given me. Only later did I realise that I no longer needed him, though…
Q: Does a person’s mortal sin prior to becoming Catholic follow him or her until confession and absolution? In particular, if a non-Catholic friend paid for someone’s abortion during the 1970s under the false belief that the foetus was just ‘tissue’ and not a baby yet, should the friend now acknowledge that his or her…
The Feast of St Therese of Lisieux has a special significance in this Centenary year of her canonisation, which took place on May 17, 1925. At the time of her canonisation Therese would have been only fifty-one years old. She was so popular it seemed the people had pre-empted the Church in recognising her as…
I write this piece the morning after a distressing night. A reconfiguration of sleeping arrangements to give our firstborn his own bedroom meant that I lay down to sleep gazing up at the night sky through a Velux window above the bed in our new room. As I lay there admiring far off constellations, I…
When Pope Leo XIV was still Fr Robert Prevost, he was assaulted on a Dublin street. “Never in my life, anywhere in the world have I been attacked as I was in Ireland” he said. Fr Prevost’s only ‘crime’ was wearing a collar at a time when public fury over clerical abuse and cover-ups was…
Fr John McCarthy
Renata Steffens
Fr Dominik Domagala
Fr Ronald Rolheiser