Nothing is as important as forgiveness. It is the key to happiness and the most important spiritual imperative in our lives. We need to forgive, to make peace with the hurts and injustices we have suffered so as not to die angry and bitter. Before we die, we need to forgive – others, ourselves, and…
The Sunday Gospel While the first reading and responsorial psalm are chosen to connect with the Gospel of the day, it occasionally happens that the second reading touches on the same theme. The mercy of God to sinners features in each text this Sunday. In the first reading (Exodus 32:7-11.13-14), when the Israelites worshipped a calf…
A wise old Augustinian priest once shared this in class. There are days in my life when everything from the pressures of my work, to tiredness, to depression, to distraction, to flat-out laziness make it difficult for me to pray. But, no matter what, I always try to pray at least one sincere, focused Our…
Great crowds accompanied Jesus on his way and he turned and spoke to them. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:1-2). The size of the crowd did not impress Jesus. He could read their minds and intentions. Some…
Henri Nouwen once suggested that if you want to understand the tragedy of the Second World War, you can read a hundred history books about it and watch a thousand hours of video documentaries on it, or you can read the Diary of Anne Frank. In that single memoir of a young girl imprisoned and…
The Sunday Gospel On a sabbath day Jesus was invited for a meal to the house of a leading Pharisee (Luke 14:1). No table was considered blessed unless a scholar sat at it. The body will savour the delights of victual and vine all the more if the meal is salted with lively table-talk. In Luke’s…
At the end of the day, all of us, believers and non-believers, pious and impious, share one common humanity and all end up on the same road. This has many implications. It’s no secret that today religious practice is plummeting radically everywhere in the secular world. Those who are opting out don’t all look the…
The Sunday Gospel Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. Last Sunday, we heard him say that he had come to bring fire to the earth and that he would have to plunge into the sea of suffering, a prospect that caused him great distress. Somebody came up to him and asked, “Sir, will there…
In a particularly poignant passage in her poem, The Leaf and the Cloud, Mary Oliver pictures herself standing at the gravesite of her mother and father, reflecting on their lives. They were far from perfect and she doesn’t sugarcoat their faults. She openly names her mother’s heaviness of soul and her father’s immature faith. She…
The Sunday Gospel My inspiration this week takes the Second Reading (Hebrews 12:1-4) as a lead in to the Gospel of the day (Luke 12: 49-53). “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection.” I have often taken this sentence as the theme of…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser