In his Confessions, St Augustine describes how his conversion to Christianity involved two separate moments of grace, the first that convinced him intellectually that Christianity was correct, and the second that empowered him to live out what he believed. There were nearly nine years between these two conversions and it was during those nine years…
Ghandi’s favourite reading was the Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes. He was deeply impressed by the life of Jesus Christ but not by the lives of Christians. Last week our Gospel was about the mission of Jesus to restore the world to the reign of God. Today we start the Sermon on the…
In a homily, Karl Rahner once commented that in the Beatitudes in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes a rather stunning statement. He says, “blessed are you who are now weeping, for you shall laugh”. Rahner suggests that Jesus is teaching that our final state of happiness in heaven will not just lift us out of our…
The voice of John the Baptist is now silenced behind prison walls. It is time for Jesus to begin his mission. He leaves his home and work in Nazareth and settles initially in Capernaum, a lakeside town not too far away. There he begins his preaching with a short but challenging message. “Repent, for the…
One of the most ancient problems in philosophy is the question of ‘the one and the many’, whether reality is ultimately a unity or a plurality and how these interrelate. We might ask the same question regarding the plurality of religious faiths, Churches, and forms of worship in our world. Is there some inherent oneness…
This Sunday’s Gospel (John 1:29-34) begins with John the Baptist pointing towards Jesus and saying, “Look, there is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world”. His words are repeated at Mass in order to alert us to the awesome privilege of welcoming the Lord in the Eucharist. “Behold the Lamb…
Lindsey Weishar In the past few years, the term visio divina has gained traction in the Catholic lexicon. Like lectio divina, which is a way to pray with Scripture, visio divina translates to “divine seeing” and is a way to pray with art or other visual media alongside Scripture. I first encountered visio divina in…
Who is this child born in Bethlehem? The manifestation of his divinity is known as an epiphany. On Friday, the sixth of January, we recall the first of three epiphanies. The Wise Men coming from the east brought gold to proclaim Jesus as king, frankincense to represent his priesthood, and myrrh which is used for…
‘The book you need to read finds you, and finds you at that time in your life when you need to read it’. I believe that old axiom, and offer it here as an apologia for my selection of books for 2022. Good art and good literature always have an objective element to them, a…
The Wisdom of Pope Francis Christian faith, inasmuch as it proclaims the truth of God’s total love and opens us to the power of that love, penetrates to the core of our human experience. Each of us comes to the light because of love, and each of us is called to love in order to…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser