At first sight there’s a contrast between the two readings today. The first reading is all full of haste and energy and speed. The Word coming to the rescue, saving the Israelites, giving them safe passage, re-making the world to make us free. And not just quietly let loose but light-hearted, skipping like lambs, singing …
Yearly Archives: 2005
Remembrance
The war to end all wars didn’t. AFTERMATH by Siegfried Sassoon (1920) HAVE you forgotten yet?… For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heaven …
“Crimson Joy”
Another cracking piece from WaiterRant. Marvellous!
Looking at God Looking at You: Ignatius’ Third Addition
I’ve just been wrapping up an article for the British Jesuit’s spirituality journal The Way. The paper is about spiritual direction and the choices a director makes to follow one thread and set aside others. It should appear in January 2006.
Some time back (October 2004) I published another paper in The Way, this time on a relatively neglected suggestion found in The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. The suggestion in question is this:
A step or two in front of the place where I am to contemplate or meditate, I will stand for the length of an Our Father, raising my mind above and considering how God our Lord is looking at me, etc., and make an act of reverence or humility.
I try to show that buried in this rather dry injunction is a rich spirituality of personal relationship with God. You can download a PDF version or read on…
Sunday Week 32 Year A
Seems like dreams can go two ways. Ever had one of those nightmares where you are being chased down long corridors through tangled forests towards the ever receding safety of a half-open door? That door can go two ways: slam shut behind you with a flood or relief or slam shut in your face with …
Friday Week 31 Year I (St Charles Borromeo)
They are all at it today. It’s an orgy of self-justification. The parable’s full of it. Paul’s full of it. And even our feast of Charles Borromeo hints of it. How do we do things right? How do we run our diocese, or live out our calling, or just make an easy living? If no …
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Monday Week 29 Year I
You can’t take it with you, they say. And they’re right. We come into this world naked, defenceless and dependent. And that’s the way we leave it. Our barns can be bursting but we can’t carry a single loaf across death’s threshold to save our hungry souls. I like the way God says ‘Fool!’ today. …
Saturday Week 27 Year I
‘Put the sickle in, the harvest is ripe’, says Joel. It’s a common prophetic theme: the end-time, the restoration and reprieve of the chosen people. And all the imagery yokes harvest and judgment: the sickle, the threshing floor, the winnowing fan. It’s even there in the gospels. My New Testament teacher liked to point out …
Thursday Week 27 Year I
There’s something almost comforting about dear old Malachi. It could be a Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. ‘Look at the state of the world. Look at what we’ve come to. Look how things have gone to the dogs.’ It seems things haven’t been the way they used to be for at least a few thousand …
“Legion”
Another powerful post from waiterrant: read it.