“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit” Plaque on President Ronald Reagan’s desk (1980-88) “The whole idea of the Presidency is having somebody in the Oval Office who can try to get above the bickering and buttonholing in the cloakrooms…
I first came across the works of Father Josef Neuner, S.J., in several scholarly articles published in Review for Religious (2001) on interpreting the spiritual journey and darkness of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. In a posthumous collection of her personal letters, Come be My Light (Doubleday 2007), representing her ‘unauthorized’ autobiography, Father Neuner was indeed the spiritual director…
We visited the ancient city of Lijiang in Yunnan Province in 2009 and were privileged to partake in a Qing Ming meal in the ancestral home of a Naxi family. The simple but hearty countryside fare was served unceasingly and generously, after which the folks gathered to reminiscence and watch television. The dim dankly room…
When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree, They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary; They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep, For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap. When Jesus came to…
On Palm Sunday, in the Passion Reading of Luke’s Gospel (23:1-49), Jesus makes an analogy to the treatment to Himself with our fragile Earth that is so evocative as to be worthy of a quotation about our environment (23:28-31) But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for…
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…
Pentecost and the Gifts of Faith, Hope and Love Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), the noted author of the ground-breaking work, On Death and Dying (1969), once wrote in her memoir (The Wheel of Life, 1997), “the only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love”. Pentecost Sunday marks the end of the Easter…
The readings at Easter always throws us back to a time when the Church was new, and reflecting on the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, we imagine ourselves in the place of the followers (or apostles!), wondering if we too, could stand up to the challenges of being early adopters of the faith.…