5th Sunday in Lent – Year B – Jn 12: 20-33 Two rather elderly Jesuits were recently having a conversation about dying. One of them asked the other “Are you afraid of dying?” Confident of being able to stare death in the face unflinchingly, his friend replied unhesitatingly “No not at all, I don’t mind death at all – let ...
Second Sunday in Lent – Year B – Mk 9: 2-10 Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and widely acclaimed spiritual writer, brought out a book a few years ago, entitled “Falling Upwards.” His main thesis in this book is that life is divided into two halves. The first half of life is all about building one’s tower. As you might ...
Jesuit Brother Bvukumbgwe, who died in 2002, was a composer whose songsare widely used in Church liturgies in Zimbabwe. One who knew him wrote:Many of his songs come to him in his dreams at night. He would rise from his bed,sing or hum them into a cassette and go back to sleep. In the morning he played thecassette to his ...
I visited a farmer who employs upwards from 60 to 450 workers depending onthe seasons. He is not the owner but a manager employed by another managerof several farms who works for the owner, a war veteran of the Zimbabwe warof Liberation. The farmer, who once owned his own farm before RobertMugabe’s Land Reform, has accepted his new situation, not ...
For those of us whose daily tool is no longer a badza or an axe but a laptop, thefirst word that pops up when we turn it on is ‘Welcome’! There is a widespectrum in which that word occurs. At one extreme, like with the laptop, it is afunction of a business relationship – the equivalent of saying, ‘thank you ...
‘Mistrust him, Meg, I will not though I should feel my fear even at point tooverthrow me too, yet will I remember how St Peter with a blast of wind beganto sink for his faint faith, shall do as he did, call up on Christ and pray him forhelp.’ With these words, Thomas More expressed his trust in God to ...
A huge crowd gathered in Nottingham city centre on Thursday, June 15. Whatwas the event? Had Forest won the cup? On a closer look, everyone wassombre, silent and thoughtful. They had come to share the grief of three familieswho had each lost a member in a seemingly senseless murder spree on Tuesdaymorning. Two were students and the third was a ...
The discussion was about vaping. The presenter said it is a problem with youngpeople. They see it as a substitute for smoking – not harmful to health and yetgiving a kick like smoking. Besides, it is ‘cool’ and there is peer pressure to getinto it. But, she said, it is now known to be harmful though maybe not so muchas ...
May opened with a grand display of ritual; people in ‘funny clothes’ heldcaptive to tradition as a crown was placed on the head of a man in England.Millions watched, mildly embarrassed that they were actually enjoying a showthat seemed to have no relevance to real life. May closed for some hundreds ofus as we watched a graduation ceremony at Arrupe ...
I bought this postcard of the tympanum over the door of the cathedral of St Trophime in Arles, in the south of France, in 1964. This twelfth century sculpture shows Jesus enthroned, surrounded by the four living creatures of Revelation (4:6-8) who, from the time of Irenaeus in the second century, came to represent the four gospels. The whole semi-circular ...
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