Twenty-eight years ago, following the Synod on consecrated life, Pope St John Paul II released his Apostolic Exhortation, Vita Consecrata.[1] Its opening sentence reads: “The Consecrated Life, deeply rooted in the example and teaching of Christ the Lord, is a gift of God the Father to his Church through the Holy Spirit.”…
Around 1600 Doménikos Theotok/ópoulos—known as El Greco—painted his Pentecost, now in the Prado in Madrid. Born in Crete, where he studied Byzantine iconography, he honed his skills at the feet of the master Titian, while imitating the likes of Michelangelo, Raphael and Tintoretto. Yet he had his own distinctive style, with tortuously elongated figures and phantasmagorical pigmentation…
I was there when Bishop Peter Ingham, during an Ad limina visit of all the Bishops of Australia to Rome, asked one of the gloriously dressed Vatican soldiers what country he was from. “Switzerland,” the guarded guard answered. “Switzerland?” Peter said, “I didn’t know there were Catholics in Switzerland.” Then he asked another of the guards, “And what country are you from?” “Switzerland,” the puzzled youth answered, to which the elderly Australian bishop responded…
The idea of the ‘golden ticket’ was first popularised in Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its subsequent film adaptations. A poor paperboy named Charlie Bucket has his life turned upside down when he finds a golden ticket in a chocolate bar, inviting him to visit Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. He tours the chocolate palace with four other children: the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the snobby Veruca Salt…
Is war just human nature? According to a recent article in Scientific American, answers to this question tend to fall into two camps. The ‘Hawks’ hold that taking up arms is an evolved human behaviour aimed at eliminating competitors. War is an expression of natural animal aggression and defensiveness, preferencing survival of the group…
In today’s Gospel Jesus is in the Temple on the winter Feast of the Dedication or ‘Hannukah’ (Jn 10:22-30). Just as it is today, it was celebrated around the time of His birthday. Jewish holy days are Scriptural in origin: Shabbat, the Saturday day of rest and weekly observance of God’s completion of creation; Rosh Hashanah…
The Washington Post calls him “Britain’s rock-star shepherd”.[1] The “shepherd-author-influencer” with over a hundred thousand social media followers, James Rebanks rose to prominence off the back of his autobiography, The Shepherd’s Life (2015)…
In The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls the nineteenth-century American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a contemporary of John Bede Polding, used the imagery of an adventurer like Polding crossing oceans and lands to visit various communities, as a way to reflect on time and mortality…
עֲלֵיכֶם שָׁלוֹם Shalom aleichem. Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν Eirēnē humin. Pax vobiscum. Peace be with you. So Jesus greets His disciples in today’s Gospel (Lk 24:35-48) and His other post-resurrection appearances (Jn 20:19,21,26). It was, of course, His customary greeting, blessing and farewell…
It’s the holiest place on earth—the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—and on entering it the first thing you see is the Stone of Unction, traditionally the slab upon which Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus laid out the dead Jesus to embalm Him (Jn 19:39-40). Last year I was blessed to visit that place with Father Lewi…
The Holy Lance or Spear of Destiny is the one that pierced Jesus’ side in today’s Passion of St John (Jn chs 18 & 19 at 19:34). Like the Grail (or chalice) of the Last Supper, the Lance became the subject of various extrabiblical traditions, including the Arthurian legend. In Chrétien de Troyes’ medieval poem Perceval, the Fisher King has keeping of both Lance and Grail…
The quest for the Holy Grail was part of the Arthurian legend that evolved in the Middle Ages, first in Celtic ballards and then French romances.[1] In Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the grail was a miraculous food salver, protected by the Fisher King.[2] When Robert de Boron retold the tale in his Joseph of Arimathea, it had become the Chalice used by Our Lord at His Last Supper, now with healing powers…
