Jem Sullivan The sacred events of Holy Week beg the question: Why did Jesus, the Son of God, have to suffer a cruel, unjust death on a cross? Was Jesus’ suffering the only means by which humanity could be reconciled to friendship with God? Jesus was obedient to the point of death, even death on…
Sometimes there’s nothing as helpful as a good metaphor. In his book, The God Instinct, Tom Stella shares this story: A number of men who made their living as porters were hired one day to carry a huge load of supplies for a group on safari. Their loads were unusually heavy and the trek through…
Whatever else we may be thinking about in these last days of Lent, the readings for this fifth Sunday make it clear: Something’s coming. You can’t help but feel that the winds are shifting. The reading from Jeremiah promises, “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with…
What is a monastery? How do monasteries work? St Benedict (480-547AD) who is considered the founder of Western monasticism, offered this counsel as an essential rule for his monks: Stay in your cell and it will teach all you need to know. Properly understood, this is a rich metaphor, not a literal counsel. When…
Need a summary of the Christian faith? This Sunday’s Gospel offers one. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). The evangelist John leads us to the heart of the Gospel and the heart…
I hate crowds, at least most of them. I’m okay at football games, where a crowd has bracketed its sanity for a couple of hours for a cathartic release. But I hate those crowds that are caught up in a fever that feeds off group think, be that a cultural fad, a political ideology, a…
Deacon Greg Kandra Incredibly, we’re already entering the third week of Lent. The ashes are a distant memory. We’ve gotten used to grilled cheese and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches on Fridays and we’ve mustered the self-control to resist having that chocolate bar at 3pm. Maybe we’ve settled into the rhythm of Lent and become used to it.…
What is our deepest centre? Normally we take that to mean the deepest part of our heart, the deepest part of our soul, our affective centre, our moral centre, that place inside of us which Thomas Merton called le pointe vierge. And that is a good way of imagining it. But there’s another. John of…
God behaves in the psalms in ways that God is not allowed to behave in theology. That quip comes from Sebastian Moore and should be highlighted at a time when fewer people want to use the psalms in prayer because they feel offended by what they sometimes find there. More and more, we see people…
Deacon Greg Kandra Gn 9:8-15 Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 1 Pt 3:18-22 Mk 1:12-15 Was that it? This weekend, the first Sunday of Lent, we hear Mark’s account of Jesus going into the desert before he begins his earthly ministry. But Mark doesn’t tell us very much. He mentions Satan and angels, temptations and wild…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser