My favourite film this year has been Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge. Andrew Garfield brilliantly plays Desmond Doss, a medic who was the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Every great religion has had its sacred sites where people felt closest to God. Our Jewish ancestors counted the Jerusalem Temple their holiest place, where God’s shalom dwelt, and the prayers and sacrifices of the cult were offered.
In 1802 an orphan boy was placed in the care of his uncle, Father Bede Brewer, leader of the English Benedictine Congregation.
“I pull a Kleenex from its box and hand it to Stevie Nicks. She wipes a tear as it slides down her cheek. She cries… when she speaks of the babies she might have had.”
Origins: ‘From Nazareth?’ asked Nathanael, ‘Can anything good come from Nazareth?’ (Jn 1:45-51) It’s one of the most famous and sardonic questions in the New Testament.
Monica Riley once wanted to be the world’s fattest woman. Each day she would consume over 10,000 calories, often being fed through a funnel.
“It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money from, or to regard them merely as so much muscle power… To the rich I say… once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest that one owns belongs to the poor.”
The website MyFreeImplants.com started in 2005 as a way to crowd-fund women who want breast implants. They create a profile and would-be donors can scroll through, access photos of them, even talk to them through live streaming, before making a donation.
The phrase “walking on water” is often used, understandably, to indicate an impossible task; so, when we are told to do something we think too hard, we might respond that “you might as well tell me to walk on water”.
Thank you for those kind words of introduction. Five years ago Nicholas Tonti-Filippini reviewed my book, Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium, for which I was very grateful. It is a pleasure, therefore, to return the favour by launching his final work, the fifth in his About Bioethics series published by Connor Court, regrettably without Nick’s physical presence with us tonight.
Jesus’ life was often hard and He mostly eschewed the limelight, preferring to preach and heal through small gestures that encouraged and persuaded rather than big ones that wowed and overwhelmed.
Our three parables this morning (Mt 13:44-52) compare the joy of finding the kingdom of heaven with the excitement people in Jesus’ world experienced on finding natural resources (like gold in a field), human inventions (like pearls set and retailed by merchants), or spiritual goods (like the ‘good fish’ sorted from the bad ones by the angels).
