Jan 11, 2021 | The Spiritual Life
“Jesus said, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: you must love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang the...
Jan 3, 2021 | The Spiritual Life
One problem with a secularised view of Christmas is the potential for it to become the ‘Feast Of Me’ – we can become the focus, if the reason for the feast is detached from the celebration of it. Under this view, Christmas is about wanting –...
Dec 31, 2020 | Our Lady, The Spiritual Life
Words have great power. They are capable of building up another – and equally capable of tearing down. Words can build bridges – but more often than not, they can build walls. And once spoken, our words can never be taken back. The effect of our words can...
Dec 29, 2020 | Prayer, The Spiritual Life
As Christmas approached, we may have found ourselves filled with thoughts of the Baby Jesus lying in His manger, the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph looking on adoringly. Not surprisingly, our emotions might have risen to lofty heights – those heights are...
Dec 27, 2020 | The Spiritual Life
Imagine a map of the world; now imagine a point on that map, a particular place. And now, try to imagine all the people on the earth, each of them trying to reach that one point. Think how many paths there are, each beginning at a particular point, a different place...
Dec 24, 2020 | General, The Spiritual Life, World
This morning I read a short poem called Manger Scene, written by an acquaintance on Twitter. You can click on the link to read it, should you wish to do so – and I do recommend it. The poem contained this line – “to see what cannot be hidden”....
Dec 23, 2020 | Prayer, Rosary, The Spiritual Life
Our Holy Father Pope Francis tells us that “If prayer isn’t courageous, it isn’t Christian,” and he reminds us that “if prayer does not gather the joys and sorrows, the hopes and the anxieties of humanity, it becomes a...
Dec 18, 2020 | The Spiritual Life
One of the worst traps we can fall into is to begin to judge others. It matters not a bit what we are judging others on – to do so is wrong. There is only one judge – and it is none of us. Sadly, for Christians – and particularly for Catholics, it...
Dec 13, 2020 | Miscellany, The Spiritual Life
On some days, and in relation to some events and circumstances, I find myself experiencing an almost overwhelming sense of interior anxiety. I feel this at the physcial level as much as at the mental level and it can be – not surprisingly – both very...