I’m getting married this year. As the day draws closer, amid all the preparations, we’ve found ourselves watching a run of wedding rom-coms. And a familiar pattern kept resurfacing. For example, in Runaway Bride, the problem isn’t that love is absent, but that it is perpetually deferred. Maggie (Julia Roberts), the titular runaway bride, repeatedly…
Lectio Divina continually invites us beyond ourselves, teaching us to recognise others in the text and to allow the Word to speak, says Fr Barry White Christianity is not, as Pope Benedict XVI so often reminded us, an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, or a moralism. Christianity is an encounter, a love story;…
Is 8:23-9:3 (9:1-4); Ps 27(26) 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17; Matthew 4:12-23 Jesus said: Follow me! Matt. 4:12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. Matt. 4:13 He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, Matt. 4:14…
St Anthony of Padua is one of the most beloved saints of the Church whose feast day is celebrated each year on June 13. He is often confused with his namesake, St Anthony of the Desert, whose feast day we celebrate this Saturday, January 17. This earlier Anthony is considered to be the father of…
We’ve come to canonise uncertainty and to be suspicious of certainty, says Fr Chris Hayden “We take every thought captive, and bring it to obedience to Christ.” So writes St Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (10:5). What we think, the set of ideas we hold, is not a matter of indifference.…
* Isaiah 49:3,5-6 – *1 Corinthians 1:1-3 – * John 1:29-34 The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, leads us along almost the same path as the previous Sunday. Once again, we return to the River Jordan and to the event of Jesus’ baptism. This time, however, we are no longer direct witnesses of the…
I once lived in community for several years with an Oblate brother who was wonderfully generous and pious to a fault. But he struggled to pick up symbol and metaphor. He took things literally. For him, what the words said is what they meant! This caused him considerable confusion and consternation when each day praying…
How can Scripture draw us more deeply to God? One ancient Christian practice offers a path: lectio divina, Latin for ‘sacred reading.’ It is one of the earliest forms of Christian prayer, long recommended by the Church as a way to let the Bible come alive in our hearts. From the beginning, Christians followed the…
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Psalm 29 (28); Acts 10:34-38; Matthew 3:13-17 ===== “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” Matt 3:13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptised by him. Matt3:14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you,…
Remember the song lyrics: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love!” It’s hard to disagree with such a sentiment, especially at the present time when nations and people are at war with each other. Love is a beautiful thing, and we could use more of it. However, the world is in need of…
Fr Barry White
Fr Dominik Domagala
Fr Ronald Rolheiser