Tim Quinlan describes his personal key to survival, a spiritual perspective which helps him to bear the high stress levels which secondary school teaching induce in him.
Brian O’Leary SJ points out that in his “Autobiography” St Ignatius of Loyola shows us how God guided him from the beginning of his conversion. So in our lives we can work out for ourselves how God may be guiding us.
Brian Grogan SJ looks at how being wounded in action at the siege of Pamplona brought Ignatius to a sense of crisis in his life where he had to make a decision about his future. It also revealed how he now looked at the life he led up til then.
In 1850, Dom Prosper Gueranger OSB, at the invitation of Pope Pius IX, wrote a book which the Pope used as the basis of the Constitution “Ineffabalis Deus” which defined the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, on 8th December 1854. This article of a little over 4,000 words was written [...]
We should beware of neglecting the great religious value of our ordinary experience of the world, says Donagh O’Shea OP.
Paddy O’Meara observes that the poetry and songs of Johnny Cash, Patrick Kavanagh and Kris Kristofferson have touched the hearts of countless people – touched them in a way that hymns, sermons, or the Bible may never have. There are lessons here for the institutional church.
Seán O Conaill identifies an elitist vein in present-day individualism and warns that the right response is not a return to the social and religious conformism of the past.
Brian Grogan SJ points out that Ignatius’s visit to Jerusalem in September 1523 was a high point in his life. Ever after he was able to recall in imagination the scenes where the mysteries of Jesus’ life were acted out. This became a technique of prayer that he taught to [...]
This is the Year of the Rosary, and October is the Month of the Rosary. Last October, Pope John Paul II announced five new mysteries, to be added to the traditional fifteen mysteries: Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious. Called the ‘Mysteries of Light’, the new mysteries focus on Jesus’ years in [...]
Not all of us makes the best of the hand of cards that fate has dealt us, but Paul Andrews met someone who definitely did – “one of the most remarkable people I have met”.
Dame Maura Sée presents brief but useful extracts from the major writings of St Augustine which are unequalled for their brilliance, charm and forcefulness. Augustine was concerned with God’s love for us and our response, with what we can know of God and with what living the life to which [...]
Cambridge University historian Eamon Duffy examines the meaning of the word ‘magisterium’ as it applies to the teaching authorities of the Church.
Patricia Higgins belongs to Slí-Eile Volunteering. She says: “I attended the funeral some years ago of the brother of a friend from college, who had committed suicide. It was a really tragic occasion, and I was disturbed more than comforted by the funeral Mass. The repeated references to praying for those [...]
Greagóir Ó Seanacháin OFM takes a look at the eremitic tradition as it was observed by St Francis and his followers, paying special attention to St Francis’s ‘Rule for the hermitage’.
Conversion refers to something more than a moral dimension. It also involves the heart and the emotions. Fr Brian O’Leary shows how St Ignatius used his day-dreams and his imagination as a means of finding out what God was drawing him towards and moving him away from.
Veneration of the Blessed Mother has been a central characteristic of the Catholic tradition. Noted theologian Lawrence Cunningham sketches out some fundamental elements for a renewed, contemporary Marian devotion.
Jill Sheehan’s book is a collection of short, thoughtful and heartfelt reflections for times of joy and trouble. It carries a simple but significant message of optimism and appreciation for all that life offers, good and bad.
Seán O’Conaill questions the merit of a ponderous faith, full of abstract truths and right answers, and he makes a plea instead “for something we can carry lightly as a source of happiness and wisdom for ourselves and others”.
Brian Grogan, S.J. finds God busy behind the scenes as the haphazard events of each day unfold.
Fr Pedro Arrupe on devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Brian Grogan brings us on a visit to the places and scenes of St Ignatius’s life and asks us to ponder what it would be like for us to revisit the scenes of our own life after we died.
Henry Peel OP sketches the events of December 8, 1854, when Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Immaculate Conception a dogma.
This book edited by Kieran McKeown and Hugh Arthurs, is about the spiritual journeys of diverse people and their personal experiences of God and religion. It chronicles the different ways in which they have been shaped and marked by their encounters with God and religion, in the broadest sense, and [...]
Seán O’Conaill looks back at a personal crisis of faith and how it led him to perceive that the Church only makes sense when understood as an extension of Christ’s self-effacing and self-giving.
Pilgrim, mystic, carer of lepers, civil war victim: Charles Moore tells story of the extraordinary life in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) of Catholic convert, John Bradburne.
Sister Una Agnew SSL, author of The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh: A Buttonhole in Heaven (1998) explores the mystical vision of Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry.
“An extraordinary change has come about, transforming the recluse into an apostle.” This is how Brian Grogan SJ describes what happens to Ignatius in Manresa.
Mary, an obscure but feisty young woman from Nazareth, continues to have a powerful hold on the Catholic imagination. Rosemary Houghton writes.
Fr John Bollan is Director of Spiritual and Pastoral Formation in the Religious Education Department at the University of Glasgow. He shows how scriptural passages yield spiritual richness for the teacher and he also supplies a practical tool-kit of materials to help students and teachers to develop their own faith [...]
Dear Father, many highly educated men and women claim to be atheists. Yet anyone with even a minimum of intelligence must realise that the world just could not have started by itself. Scriptures say that ‘the fool has said in his heart, “there is no God”‘. Must we conclude that [...]
