Fr Ronald RolheiserIn a book, The Book of Hope, which he co-authored with Jane Goodall, Douglas Abrams makes this statement: Creating the human race may be the single biggest mistake evolution ever made.
Our lifestyle and our over-strained planet
Category: Spirituality
‘Rich food and choice wines’
This Sunday’s scripture is not very helpful if you’re trying to stay on a diet. Again and again, we hear about extravagant dining: “rich food and choice wines” in Isaiah; a full table and an overflowing cup in the psalm; a rich wedding feast in the Gospel from Matthew.
Our deepest loneliness
Harvard psychologist Robert Coles, in describing the French mystic Simone Weil, once suggested that what she really suffered from and what motivated her life was her moral loneliness. What is that? Moral loneliness is what we experience when we ache for moral affinity, that is, for a soulmate, for someone who meets us, understands, and…
Will I bear fruit in my life?
The Sunday Gospel Jem Sullivan Is 5:1-7 Ps 80:9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20 Phil 4:6-9 Mt 21:33-43 Scripture is filled with almost lyrical images for the divine human relationship. The first reading offers one such poetic passage as the prophet Isaiah uses the image of a grape harvest. In vine growing areas, the grape…
Surrendering to love
Perhaps all of Jesus’ invitations to us can be summarised in one word, surrender. We need to surrender to love. But why is that difficult? Shouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world? Isn’t our deepest desire a longing to find love and surrender to it? True, our deepest longing is to surrender…
It isn’t too late to change for the better
Deacon Greg Kandra Ez 18:25-28 Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Phil 2:1-11 Phil 2:1-5 (alternate) Mt 21:28-32 This Sunday’s Gospel offers us an idea a lot of us need to hear: “It’s not too late. Any of us, if we choose, can follow another path.” Telling the story of two sons who made two different…
A single line says it all!
You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. No single line, outside of Scripture, has ever spoken to me as powerfully, as persistently, and as hauntingly, as that line from St Augustine. In essence, it’s Augustine’s life story – and the story of each of our…
God’s generosity cannot be outdone
Jem Sullivan Is 55:6-9 Ps 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18 Phil 1:20c-24, 27a Mt 20:1-16a The paradox we encounter in Gospel parables is meant to open us up to a deeper understanding of who God is and who we are in relationship to God. To unpack the deeper meaning of the parable takes time, reflection and silence.…
Our hypocrisy and our blindness
The subtlety of hypocrisy! How easy it is not to see our own inconsistencies, even as we so clearly see the faults of others. Are we wilfully blind, or is it that we just don’t see? Is this a moral problem or a visual one? Consider these examples: In his travels, the 18th Century explorer,…
Just like JPII: Never give up on mercy
Deacon Greg Kandra 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Sir 27:30—28:7 Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12 Rom 14:7-9 Mt 18:21-35 It happened in late December of 1983, just days after Christmas. Pope John Paul II, the world’s most-travelled Pope, journeyed just a short distance from where he lived, into a section of Rome he probably didn’t know very…