“Hope. Hope is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was one of the wittiest ever exponents of the English language. He lived a rather colourful and controversial existence in the second half of the nineteenth century.

These days words can pop into the English lexicon before our eyes. So, for example, the proper noun ‘Google’ has become a verb: ‘to google’ something means to search for it on the internet.

They were people just like us, doing the most innocent and human of things: eating with family at a restaurant, working in a pizzeria, cheering at a football friendly, having a drink with friends in a bar, singing and dancing at a rock concert.

As she approached the guillotine, the erstwhile Archduchess of Austria, Dauphine of France, then Queen of France and Navarre, Marie Antoinette, trod on her executioner’s foot.

The Medieval Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, authored the most famous poem in the history of Christendom, The Divine Comedy. When one of my Aussie-born seminarians in Parramatta …

A photo of First Communion Day 1955 here at St Dominic’s shows pews filled of young girls in white bridal gowns and tulle veils, expectantly awaiting their bridegroom the Eucharistic Lord.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul [and mind] and strength,” as John read to us from Deuteronomy today and as Jesus paraphrased, adding the cognate command to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Dt 6:4-6; Lk 10:27).

Hints of death surround us. Nature’s intimations range from autumn leaves at this time in the Northern hemisphere and wrinkles and grey hairs noticed in the mirror

Amongst the heroes of my childhood were priests, nuns and brothers belonging to various religious orders. They were heroic in the sense of doing more than average by way of giving themselves to God and others.

His name is most famously associated with the St Vincent de Paul Society. But St Vincent had never heard of the Vinnies – he was long dead when they were invented.

In this ANZAC centenary year there have been books, movies and TV series, musical compositions, interviews, readings from diaries, exhibitions of artefacts and, perhaps most powerfully, of photographs, all recording…