When the great art historian, museum director and broadcaster, Kenneth Clark, finally entered the Catholic Church on his deathbed, he fulfilled an earlier prediction. He had said that when that time came it would be like a painting entering the Louvre: “It would find itself in some pretty queer company, but at least it would be sure that it had a soul.”
Where do hymns come from? Well, the ancient Egyptians, Jews, Hindus and Greeks all had their religious songs. Christians were from the start great ones for singing, whether in private devotions or corporate worship (e.g. Mt 26:30; Mk 14:26; Acts 16:25; 1Cor 14:26; Eph 5:19; Col 3:16; Jam 5:13). Early hymns are recorded in the Scriptures, such as the Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis …
Silence. It can be oppressive, as in today’s Gospel when the people of Jesus’ hometown effectively gag his words and miracles (Mk 6:1-6). Silence can be angry or indolent, as when people sulk or neglect to speak up when they should. It can even be a weapon of passive resistance. The Anglican divine, Adam Ford, tells of a husband and wife he met who hadn’t spoken a word to each other in twenty years.
Before my conversion I was a proper little pagan. I lived for my next drink or other sensory experience, for the satisfaction of my baser passions. I cared nothing for other people’s needs and never gave a thought to worshipping God or serving humanity. I didn’t turn my mind to the great mysteries of God, creation and ourselves. I just wanted pleasant experiences and a quick fix to anything unpleasant.
“Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the ‘Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again’. Hamish is shocked and declares that ‘No Scotsman would do such a thing.’ The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton …
When Pope Urban IV decided to extend the feast of Corpus Christi to the universal Church, he wisely chose the great Dominican theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, to compose the Mass and Liturgy of the Hours for this great feast. Thus he bequeathed to us the Sacris Solemniis with its Panis Angelicus, the Verbum Supernum, the Lauda Sion, the Adoro …
When hundreds of thousands of the young people of the world gathered here in Sydney ten years ago to celebrate the World Youth Day, they were encouraged to make their way to the Cathedral as pilgrims have always done. Here they were able to consecrate themselves to Our Lady after the example …
What to give the woman who has everything? We can imagine Pope Francis kneeling at his prie-dieu thinking just this: what present can I give Mary on the 160th anniversary of the Lourdes apparitions and, more importantly, the 50th anniversary of her Schœnstatt shrine in Australia?
In the 1987 humorous detective novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the eponymous detective, Dirk Gently, declares that ‘if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.
Jeremiah O’Flynn was a ‘character’. Born in County Kerry to a tenant farmer and his wife, he suffered from wanderlust and joined a Trappist mission to the West Indies. When the monks were expelled from Martinique he stayed on, though still only a deacon, tending the Catholic slaves until he was declared …
here’s an old story about a man caught in a flood who determinedly stayed in his house when all the surrounding ones were evacuated, insisting he would trust in God. As the waters rose, people in a car stopped to offer him a lift, but he told them ‘God will save me’. As the flood …
N’oublions jamais l’Australie – Let us never forget the Australians. The instruction is written above every blackboard in the Elementary School in the French town of Villers-Bretonneux. In a campaign using the slogan “By Diggers defended, by Victorians mended” children from the state of Victoria each donated at least one penny to rebuild the school …
