The late Dean Brackley, S.J., challenges us in this quote: “I invite you to discover your vocation in downward mobility. It’s a scary request… The world is obsessed with wealth and security and upward mobility and prestige. But let us teach solidarity, walking with the victims, serving and loving. I offer this for you to…
The late Ms Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a MockingBird, (described by some as the perfect American book of the 20th century), is amongst a rare group of individuals whose fame had been secured by their first and overwhelming success, and would eventually overshadow everything else that they did, or would or would…
Saint Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo (modern-day Annaba, Algeria), Africa, chose to appoint his successor four years before he died. Thus, on 26 September 426, he gathered the people to the Basilica of Peace at Hippo to present to the faithful the one he had designated for this task. He said: In this life…
Psalm 104: 10-14 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;…
God Meets You Where You Are Even though God is always calling us to constant conversion and growth, and even though we are imperfect and sometimes sinful people, God loves us as we are now. As Fr Anthony de Mello, SJ said, “You don’t have to change for God to love you.”…you are loved even…
The mission and life work of the Catholic saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta can be summed up in a few succinct comments after reading her posthumous (‘unauthorized’) autobiography. It is not a book that one can simply put down once you have started. She started her mission for the poor, the dying and the infirmed, in…
The Singapore Writer’s Festival in November 2014 was an interesting experience because one of my favourite travel writers, Paul Theroux was featured in a few of the programs. Here, at the National Museum, the panel forum was (nominally) on Humanitarian Missions and the Third World, and I was reintroduced to the work of Charles Dickens by Mr…
The term ‘the road less travelled’ has its origins in the poem The Road Not Taken,written by the august American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could…
“How God will judge my life I know not, but I trust he will see me with mercy and compassion. I am only certain there will be three surprises in Heaven. First of all, I will see some people whom I never expected to see. Second, there will be a number whom I expected…
The great Catholic broadcaster and preacher, Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) said this about retirement: “When I resigned, I did not “retire”. I retreaded. I took on another kind of work. I believe that we spend our last days very much the way that we lived. If we have lived with ease, taking our rest, never…