Reflections 2018

23rd December 2018

Shinto
Shinto ("the way of the Kami") is the name of the formal state religion of Japan that was first
used in the 6th century A.D.., although the roots of the religion go back to at least the 6th
century B.C. Shinto has no founder, no official sacred texts, and no formalized system of
doctrine. Shinto has been formative in developing uniquely Japanese attitudes and
sensitivities, creating a distinct Japanese consciousness. Belief in kami—sacred or divine
beings, although also understood to be spiritual essences—is one of the foundations of
Shinto. Shinto understands that the kami not only exist as spiritual beings, but also in nature;
they are within mountains, trees, rivers, and even geographical regions. In this sense, the
kami are not like the all-powerful divine beings found in Western religion, but the abstract
creative forces in nature. Related to the kami is the understanding that the Shinto followers
are supposed to live in harmony and peaceful coexistence with both nature and other human
beings. This has enabled Shinto to exist in harmony with other religious traditions. As the
foundation for Japanese culture, Shinto has also played a significant role in the political
realm. For centuries, Shinto religious festivals and ceremonies have become
indistinguishable from the affairs of the government.

Even in one single leaf on a tree, or in one blade of grass, the awesome Deity presents itself.

…….

If you pray to a deity with sincerity, you will surely feel the divine presence.
……..

Our eyes might see un-cleanliness, but let not our minds see un-cleanliness. Our ears might
hear un-cleanliness, but let not our minds hear un-cleanliness.

16th December 2018

 Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641)

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (Jeanne-Françoise Frémiot, Baronne de Chantal) is a Roman

Catholic saint, who was beatified in 1751 and canonized in 1767. She founded the religious
Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary.

Jane Frances de Chantal was born in Dijon, France, on 28 January 1572, the daughter of the
royalist president of the Parliament of Burgundy. Her mother died when Jane was 18 months
old. Her father became the main influence on her education. She married the Baron de
Chantal when she was 21 and then lived in the feudal castle of Bourbilly. Baron de Chantal
was accidentally killed by an arquebus while out shooting in 1601. The pious baroness could
not bring herself to forgive the individual who had accidentally caused her husband's death,
until in 1604 she heard a Lenten sermon of the bishop of Geneva Francis de Sales, who
preached on the subject of the love of God at the Sainte Chapelle in Dijon. They became
close friends and de Sales became her spiritual director.

She wanted to become a nun but he persuaded her to defer this decision. Later, with his
support, and that of her father and brother (the archbishop of Bourges), and after providing
for her children, Chantal left for Annecy, to start the Congregation of the Visitation.

When shall it be that we shall taste the sweetness of the Divine Will in all that happens to us,
considering in everything only His good pleasure, by whom it is certain that adversity is sent
with as much love as prosperity, and as much for our good? When shall we cast ourselves
undeservedly into the arms of our most loving Father in Heaven, leaving to Him the care of
ourselves and of our affairs, and reserving only the desire of pleasing Him, and of serving
Him well in all that we can?

9th December 2018

St Anthony of Padua (1195-1231)

Saint Anthony of Padua, born Fernando Martins de Bulhões, also known as Anthony of
Lisbon, was a Portuguese Catholic priest and friar of the Franciscan Order. He was born
and raised by a wealthy family in Lisbon, Portugal, and died in Padua, Italy. Noted by his
contemporaries for his powerful preaching, expert knowledge of scripture, and undying love
and devotion to the poor and the sick, he was one of the most quickly canonized saints in
church history. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on 16 January 1946. He is also
the patron saint of lost things.
The creator of the heavens obeys a carpenter; the God of eternal glory listens to a poor virgin.
Has anyone ever witnessed anything comparable to this? Let the philosopher no longer
disdain from listening to the common labourer; the wise, to the simple; the educated, to the
illiterate; a child of a prince, to a peasant.

2nd December 2018

St. Julian Peter Eymard (1811-1868)

Saint Peter Julian Eymard was a French Catholic priest and founder of two religious
institutes: the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament for men and the Servants of the Blessed
Sacrament for women.

Eymard was La Mure, Isère in the French Alps. His father was a smith whose second wife
was Julian's mother. All his life Peter Julian (or Pierre-Julien in French) had an intense
devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Before his first communion on 16 March 1823, he
went on foot to the shrine of Notre-Dame du Laus. Later, he came to know about the
apparition of Notre-Dame de La Salette and enjoyed traveling to various Marian shrines
throughout France.

When his mother died in 1828 Julian resolved to enter the novitiate of the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate and, despite his father's opposition, did so in June 1829. His first attempt as a
seminarian ended because of serious illness. Throughout his life, Eymard suffered from poor
health, particularly ‘weakness of the lungs’ and migraine headaches.

After his father's death in 1831, he succeeded--with the help of his former superior--in
gaining admission to the major seminary of the Grenoble diocese. On 20 July 1834, he was
ordained a priest for the Diocese of Grenoble. He was assigned as assistant pastor at the
town of Chatte, and three years later, appointed pastor of Mount Saint-Eynard.

He loves, He hopes, He waits. If He came down on our altars on certain days only, some
sinner, on being moved to repentance, might have to look for Him, and not finding Him,
might have to wait. Our Lord prefers to wait Himself for the sinner for years rather than keep
him waiting one instant.

25th November 2018

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942)

Edith Stein, also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a German Jewish
philosopher who converted to Roman Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun.
She is canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church, and she is one of six co-
patron saints of Europe.

She was born into an observant Jewish family, but was an atheist by her teenage years.
Moved by the tragedies of World War I, in 1915 she took lessons to become a nursing
assistant and worked in an infectious diseases hospital. After completing her doctoral thesis
from the University of Göttingen in 1916, she obtained an assistantship at the University of
Freiburg.

From reading the works of the reformer of the Carmelite Order, Teresa of Ávila, she was
drawn to the Catholic faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Roman Catholic
Church. At that point, she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nun, but was dissuaded
by her spiritual mentors. She then taught at a Catholic school of education in Speyer. As a
result of the requirement of an "Aryan certificate" for civil servants promulgated by the Nazi
government in April 1933 as part of its Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service, she had to quit her teaching position.

She was admitted to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne the following October.
She received the religious habit of the Order as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious
name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. In 1938, she and her sister Rosa, by then also a convert
and an extern sister (tertiaries of the Order, who would handle the community′s needs outside
the monastery), were sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands, for their safety.
Despite the Nazi invasion of that state in 1940, they remained undisturbed until they were
arrested by the Nazis on 2 August 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where
they died in the gas chamber on 9 August 1942.

On the question of relating to our fellowman – our neighbour’s spiritual need transcends
every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already,
since God is love.

18th November 2018

 Stephen Russell (1954- )

Russell was born in London, 13 September 1954. Russell completed his primary education at
Holland House in North London, then went to Beechwood Park preparatory school in
Hertfordshire. He continued his education at the public school Merchant Taylors' in Moor
Park. His initial training comprised studying Aikido at 11. In his teens he switched to
studying T'ai chi, one of the three Taoist 'internal martial arts', so called because they rely on
following a set of internal principles while in the midst of movement or action.

Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding,
but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty
and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable:
quake and shake in your boots with it. The new goodness that is coming to you, in the form
of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.”
(Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior)

11th November 2018

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)

Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley was a British Army officer and Scottish war poet who
fought in the First World War, where he was killed in action during the Battle of Loos in
October 1915.

Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, he was the son of philosopher and University Professor William
Ritchie Sorley. He was educated at King's College School, Cambridge, and then like
Siegfried Sassoon, at Marlborough College (1908–13). At Marlborough College Sorley's
favourite pursuit was cross-country running in the rain, a theme evident in many of his pre-
war poems, including Rain and The Song of the Ungirt Runners. In keeping with his strict
Protestant upbringing, Sorley had strong views on right and wrong, and on two occasions
volunteered to be punished for breaking school rules.
Before taking up a scholarship to study at University College, Oxford, Sorley spent a little
more than six months in Germany from January to July 1914, three months of which were at
Schwerin studying the language and local culture. Then he enrolled at the University of Jena,
and studied there up to the outbreak of World War I.

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,

And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each others dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again

With new won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

(To Germany)
4th November 2018

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)

Swami Vivekananda was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian
mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of
Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness,
bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He
was a major force in the revival of Hinduism in India, and contributed to the concept of
nationalism in colonial India. Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math and the
Ramakrishna Mission. He is perhaps best known for his speech which began, "Sisters and
brothers of America ...," in which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the World's
Religions in Chicago in 1893.

The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I
stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him – that moment I am free
from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
28th October 2018

Saint Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)

Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini served as Pope from 21
June 1963 to his death in 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican
Council which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms, and fostered improved
ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestants, which resulted in many historic
meetings and agreements. Montini served in the Holy See's Secretariat of State from 1922 to
1954. While in the Secretariat of State, Montini and Domenico Tardini were considered as
the closest and most influential advisors of Pius XII, who in 1954 named him Archbishop of
Milan, the largest Italian diocese. Montini later became the Secretary of the Italian Bishops'
Conference. John XXIII elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 1958, and after the death
of John XXIII, Montini was considered one of his most likely successors.

Upon his election to the papacy, Montini took the name Paul VI. He re-convened the Second
Vatican Council, which had automatically closed with the death of John XXIII. After the
Council had concluded its work, Paul VI took charge of the interpretation and
implementation of its mandates, often walking a thin line between the conflicting expectations
of various groups within Catholicism. The magnitude and depth of the reforms affecting all
fields of Church life during his pontificate exceeded similar reform programmes of his
predecessors and successors. Paul VI spoke repeatedly to Marian conventions and
mariological meetings, visited Marian shrines and issued three Marian encyclicals.
Following his famous predecessor Saint Ambrose of Milan, he named Mary as the Mother of
the Church during the Second Vatican Council. Paul VI described himself as a humble
servant for a suffering humanity and demanded significant changes from the rich in North
America and Europe in favour of the poor in the Third World. His positions on birth control,
promulgated famously in the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae were often contested, especially
in Western Europe and North America. The same opposition emerged in reaction to the
political aspects of some of his teaching.

Following the standard procedures that lead to sainthood, Pope Benedict XVI declared that
the late pontiff had lived a life of heroic virtue and conferred the title of Venerable upon him
on 20 December 2012. Pope Francis beatified him on 19 October 2014 after the recognition
of a miracle attributed to his intercession. His liturgical feast is celebrated on the date of his
birth on 26 September. Pope Francis canonized Paul VI on 14 October 2018.
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live
life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now!
There are only so many tomorrows.

21st October 2018

Saint Cardinal Oscar Romero (1917-1980)

Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador
who served as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. He spoke out against poverty, social
injustice, assassinations, and torture. In 1980, Romero was assassinated while officiating
Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence. Though no one was ever convicted
for the crime, investigations by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded
that the extreme right-wing politician, founder of ARENA and death squad leader Roberto
D'Aubuisson had given the order.
A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that
doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in
which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that?

14th October 2108

Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

St. Francis was born at Assisi in 1182. After a care free youth, he turned his back on
inherited wealth and committed himself to God. Like many early saints, he lived a very simple
life of poverty, and in so doing, gained a reputation of being the friend of animals. He
established the rule of St Francis, which exists today as the Order of St. Francis, or the
Franciscans. He died in 1226, aged 44.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

7th October 2018

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, born Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin, also known as Saint Thérèse
of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, O.C.D., was a French Catholic Discalced Carmelite
nun who is widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known as "The Little Flower
of Jesus" or simply "The Little Flower".

Thérèse has been a highly influential model of sanctity for Catholics and for others because
of the "simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life". Together with Saint
Francis of Assisi, she is one of the most popular saints in the history of the church. Pope
Saint Pius X called her "the greatest saint of modern times".
Thérèse felt an early call to religious life, and overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the
early age of 15, she became a nun and joined two of her elder sisters in the cloistered
Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having
fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, and having
spent her last eighteen months in Carmel in a night of faith, she died at aged 24, following a
slow and painful fight against tuberculosis.

Her feast day is 1 October. Thérèse is well known throughout the world, with the Basilica of
Lisieux being the second-largest place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes.

I understand and I know from experience that: 'The kingdom of God is within you.' Jesus has
no need of books or teachers to instruct souls; He teaches without the noise of words. Never
have I heard Him speak, but I feel that He is within me at each moment; He is guiding and
inspiring me with what I must say and do. I find just when I need them certain lights that I
had not seen until then, and it isn't most frequently during my hours of prayer that these are
most abundant but rather in the midst of my daily occupations.
(The Story of a Soul)

30th September 2018

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the
development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of
Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982 and was elected a
member of the Académie française in 1973. He received numerous honours from universities
and institutions throughout the world and has been called, alongside James George Frazer
and Franz Boas, the "father of modern anthropology"

Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind
and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in
his famous book Tristes Tropiques that established his position as one of the central figures
in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields
in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the
underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."

A day will come when the thought that to feed themselves, men of the past raised and
massacred living beings and complacently exposed their shredded flesh in displays shall no
doubt inspire the same repulsion as that of the travellers of the 16th and 17th century facing
cannibal meals of savage American primitives in America, Oceania or Africa.
(from a letter to La Repubblica in 1980s and in Nous sommes tous des cannibales, 2013)
23rd September 2018

Martin Buber (1878-1965)

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy
of dialogue, a form of existentialism centred on the distinction between the I–Thou
relationship and the I–It relationship. Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant
Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, he
became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement,
although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923, Buber wrote his
famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in
1925, he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, and Nobel Peace Prize seven
times.

… But now you come and settle the whole existential dilemma with the simple formula:
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs."

What do you mean by saying a land belongs to a population? Evidently you do not intend
only to describe a state of affairs by your formula, but to declare a certain right. You
obviously mean to say that a people, being settled on the land, has so absolute a claim to that
land that whoever settles on it without the permission of this people has committed a robbery.
But by what means did the Arabs attain the right of ownership in Palestine? Surely by
conquest, and in fact a conquest with intent to settle. You therefore admit that as a result their
settlement gives them exclusive right of possession; whereas the subsequent conquests of the
Mamelukes and the Turks, which were conquests with a view to domination, not to
settlement, do not constitute such a right in your opinion, but leave the earlier conquerors in
rightful ownership. Thus settlement by conquest justifies for you, a right of ownership of
Palestine; whereas a settlement such as the Jewish, the methods of which, it is true, though
not always doing full justice to Arab ways of life, were even in the most objectionable cases
far removed from those of conquest, does not justify in your opinion any participation in this
right of possession. These are the consequences which result from your axiomatic statement
that a land belongs to its population. In an epoch when nations are migrating you would first
support the right of ownership of the nation that is threatened with dispossession or
extermination; but were this once achieved, you would be compelled, not at once, but after a
suitable number of generations had elapsed, to admit that the land "belongs" to the usurper. . .

It seems to me that God does not give any one portion of the earth away, so that the owner
may say as God says in the Bible: "For all the earth is Mine" (Exodus 19:5). The conquered
land is, in my opinion, only lent even to the conqueror who has settled on it-and God waits to
see what he will make of it.
(from Letter to Mahatma Gandhi on Palestine)

16th September 2018

Pope Francis (1936- )

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul
forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many
minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a
significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds of
pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in
the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort
to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to
the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from
happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The
pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more
reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
…..
With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not
where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude
and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones;
we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during
the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so
many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those
who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much
self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body
and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his
heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us!
(cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).
…..
The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality
in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every
journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not
enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers
and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of
omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our
way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts,
tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand
to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such
solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any
person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual
corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then
appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness,
for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate,
165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all
our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother's keeper?” (Gen 4:9).
(from Letter to the People of God, 20th August 2018)

9th September 2018

Pope Francis (1936- )

Pope Francis said Jesus’ “difficult logic” is contained in his prayer for those who put him to
death on the Cross.

Jesus asks God to forgive them, he said.

“There is an infinite distance between us – we who frequently refuse to forgive even small
things – and what the Lord asks of us, which he has exemplified for us: To forgive those who
seek to destroy us. It is often very difficult within families, for example, when spouses need
to forgive one another after an argument, or when one needs to forgive their mother-in-law.
It’s not easy… Rather, [we are invited] to forgive those who are killing us, who want us out
of the way… Not only forgive, but even pray that God may watch over them! Even more, to
love them. Only Jesus’ word can explain this.”

(19th June 2018, Casa Santa Marta mass)

2nd September 2018

 St Philip Neri (1515-1595)
Philip Romolo Neri, known as the Third Apostle of Rome, after Saints Peter and Paul, was an
Italian priest noted for founding a society of secular clergy called the Congregation of the
Oratory.
In 1551 Philip received all the minor orders, and was ordained deacon and finally priest. He
thought of going to India as a missionary, but was dissuaded by his friends who saw that
there was abundant work to be done in Rome. Accordingly, he settled down, with some
companions, at the Hospital of San Girolamo della Carità, and while there tentatively began,
in 1556, the institute with which his name is more especially connected, that of the Oratory.
The scheme at first was no more than a series of evening meetings in a hall (the Oratory), at
which there were prayers, hymns, and readings from Scripture, the church fathers, and the
Martyrology, followed by a lecture or by discussion of some religious question proposed for
consideration. The musical selections (settings of scenes from sacred history) were called
oratorios. Giovanni Palestrina was one of Philip’s followers, and composed music for the
services. The program developed, and the members of the society undertook various kinds of
mission work throughout Rome, notably the preaching of sermons in different churches every
evening, a completely new idea at that time. He also spent much of his time hearing
confessions, and effected many conversions in this way.
Do not grieve over the temptations you suffer. When the Lord intends to bestow a particular
virtue on us, He often permits us first to be tempted by the opposite vice. Therefore, look
upon every temptation as an invitation to grow in a particular virtue and a promise by God
that you will be successful, if only you stand fast.

26th August 2018

Lao Tzu (6th / 4th century BC)

Laozi, also Lao-Tzu, literally "Old Master" was an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer.
He is the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching, the founder of philosophical Taoism, and a
deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions.
A semi-legendary figure, Laozi was usually portrayed as a 6th-century BC contemporary of
Confucius, but some modern historians consider him to have lived during the Warring States
period of the 4th century BC.

Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. Close your mouth, block off your
senses, blunt your sharpness, untie your knots, soften your glare, settle your dust. This is the
primal identity. Be like the Tao. It can’t be approached or withdrawn from, benefited or
harmed, honoured or brought into disgrace. It gives itself up continually. That is why it
endures.

19th August 2018

Don Jose Matsuwa (1880-1990)

Don José Matsuwa is the renowned shaman from the Huichol people in Mexico. He was a
farmer, healer, master ceremonial leader, and a revered and respected elder throughout the
Sierras.

He dedicated his whole life to completing the sacred path of the shaman and it is his life and
vision that are the inspirations for the Dance of the Deer Foundation. Before he died he left
this message: “I leave you in my place. Tell your people to pray and follow the deer all the
way to their hearts.”

Shamanism is an ancient healing tradition and moreover, a way of life. Huichol shamanism
honours all of creation, especially the spirit of nature- the power of the animals, the winged
ones, the minerals, and plants. This shamanic tradition involves healing and empowerment
through personal transformation and direct experience as well as the healing of our families,
communities and our environment. By following the shaman’s path, we can truly learn to
inhabit the earth and our being with gentleness and respect.

The Huichol say we are created from the elements of the natural world- fire, air, water and
earth. Because of this, each of us is a miniature universe, a mirror of both the natural and the
spiritual worlds. All the knowledge and secrets of these two worlds are inside of us and
everything is perfectly arranged. Shamanism teaches us to tap into that arrangement, to
understand and to live in harmony with the natural and spiritual worlds.

Ceremony, sacred dance, and pilgrimages to places of power in nature are all essential
aspects of shamanism. Through these techniques, the shamanic circle embraces us unifying
our lives with strength, healing, and love.

(Dance of the Deer Foundation)

12th August 2018

Fr Lawrence Lew O.P.

English Dominican priest based in London's Rosary Shrine; a 'media missionary' using
photography to preach the Gospel's beauty
Every time we come to Mass, every time we adore the Blessed Sacrament, we are going to
the Lord’s school of humility. For we see that our almighty God is present in the Host, a
gentle, humble Presence. The immensity of God’s humility that he should subject himself to
the Priest, and allow himself to be placed in our hands and on our tongues as the Bread of
Life, is a marvel. God humbles himself in this way because he loves us, and he longs to come
to us in Holy Communion, and to give us his peace and rest. “Come to me, all you who
labour and are overburdened”, he says. Humility and love like this is so alien to us human
beings that many struggle to believe in the Real Presence. We, who are more familiar with
displays of prideful power and triumphalism, cannot easily comprehend that true greatness is
found in humility, in being able to become small. Thus God became a baby in the little town
of Bethlehem, and thus God becomes flesh for us in the Eucharist, here on our Altars.
(Homily, 18th July 2018)

5th August 2018

Maurice Zundel (1897-1975)

Fr. Maurice Zundel was one of the great, if often-forgotten, theologians of the last century.
Sometime student of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, he wrote various works of Catholic
philosophy in conversation with existentialism, Protestantism, and personalism. This wide-
ranging and erudite scholarship led soon-to-be-Saint Paul VI to call him “a mystical
genius.” However, he is best known in the Anglophone world for his writing on the liturgy.
Prayer is the soul’s breath, the creature’s fiat in response to the Creator’s in that mysterious
exchange which makes us God’s fellow-workers. Its purpose is not to inform God of needs
which He knows infinitely better than we do ourselves, nor to move His will to satisfy them,
for His will is the eternal gift of infinite Love. Its sole object is to make us more capable of
receiving such a gift, to open our eyes to the light, to throw open the portals of our heart too
narrow to give access to the King of glory. There is no need to importune God for our
happiness, for He never ceases to will it. It is we who place the obstacle in its way and keep
his love at arm’s length …
… It remains true that there is no conversation without answers, no marriage of love without
mutual consent. And it is a marriage of love that is to be concluded between God and
ourselves. In this marriage whose intimate union must continually grow until its flower
unfolds in eternity, prayer is our assent. There is no need to put it into words. It may be
confined to a silent adherence, a simple look in which we give our entire being a calm silence
in which, without adding anything of her own, the soul listens to Him who utters Himself
within her by His single Word. And all prayer tends towards this transparent passivity which
exposes the diamond of our free will to the rays of the eternal light. We can pray without
asking for anything and without saying anything, that God may express Himself the more
freely…
(The Splendour of the Liturgy, 1943, translated by Edward Watkin, “The Collect” (p. 61-67))

29th July 2018

St Aidan of Lindisfarne (+651)

Aidan of Lindisfarne, born in Ireland, may have studied under St. Senan before becoming a
monk at Iona. At the request of King Oswald of Northumbria, Aidan went to Lindisfarne as
bishop and was known throughout the kingdom for his knowledge of the Bible, his learning,
his eloquent preaching, his holiness, his distaste for pomp, his kindness to the poor, and the
miracles attributed to him. He founded a monastery at Lindisfarne that became known as the
English Iona and was a centre of learning and missionary activity for all of northern
England. He died in 651 at the royal castle at Bamburgh.

In the years prior to Aidan's mission, Christianity, which had been propagated throughout
Britain but not Ireland by the Roman Empire, was being largely displaced by Anglo-Saxon
paganism. In the monastery of Iona (founded by Columba of the Irish Church), the religion
soon found one of its principal exponents in Oswald of Northumbria, a noble youth who had
been raised there as a king in exile since 616. Baptized as a Christian, the young king vowed
to bring Christianity back to his people—an opportunity that presented itself in 634, when he
gained the crown of Northumbria.

Owing to his historical connection to Iona's monastic community, King Oswald requested
that missionaries be sent from that monastery instead of the Roman-sponsored monasteries of
Southern England. At first, they sent him a bishop named Cormán, but he alienated many
people by his harshness, and returned in failure to Iona reporting that the Northumbrians
were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticised Cormán's methods and was soon sent as
his replacement. He became bishop in 635.

Leave me alone with God as much as may be.

As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.

Then with the turning of the tide

prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.

(Prayer of St Aidan)

22nd July 2018

Fr Steve Bevans SVD

Fr Steve Bevans, Society of the Divine Word, graduated from the Divine Word College in
1967, studied theology in Rome and Cambridge University, and received his doctorate from
the University of Notre Dame. He served as a missionary in the Philippines and has been a
member of the faculty at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago since 1986.

Sometimes we imagine God as a person, like us but a lot older, a lot wiser, somehow ‘up
there’ or ‘out there,’ and kind of directing things. I’ve moved away from understanding God
in that way. God is movement. God is an embrace. God is flowing through the world. The
relationship of God moving through the world is more personal that we can ever imagine.

God calls men and women to partnership in God’s flow through the world. It’s fun. It’s
amazing to be caught up in this dance that is God. God dances through the world and pulls us
in.

From the beginning of time, God has been there through the presence of the Holy Spirit. In
the fullness of time, God gave a human face to the Holy Spirit in the form of Jesus, who
continued the work of the Spirit in a visible, audible and concrete way. Like the first
disciples, we are called to spread the good news proclaimed by Jesus in the way we lead our
lives and interact with other people. In this way, and as was stated in Vatican II, the church is
“missionary by its very nature.” We are most the church when we are participating in God’s
work of healing and reconciling. We do this when we are spreading joy and hope and
inclusion in our world.

Sometimes priests, Sisters and lay people work and work and work until they can’t work
anymore. This is God’s work. Slow down. Let God work through you. If it’s going to happen,
it’s going to happen.

15th July 2018

Jesuit Mission of St Ignatius, Montana, USA

Visions came in the late 1700’s to Chief Shining Shirt of the Pend d’Oreille tribe in Mission
Valley, Montana, that one day men would come in black robes and teach important new
truths about religion. Some years later Catholic Iroquois spread throughout the West
working as canoemen for the Hudson’s Bay Company. They too spoke of a new religion and
of men in black robes who carried a crucifix and said a great prayer.

These early traditions had a dramatic meeting in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley south of
Missoula in 1820. A band of Catholic Mohawk Iroquois had migrated under the leadership of
Ignace LaMousse and settled among the Salish Flatheads in their Bitterroot Valley. Old
Ignace, as he was known, taught the sign of the cross and Catholic prayers to the Flatheads,
baptized their children, and marked their graves with a cross. He urged the need for
Blackrobes who could say the great prayer (Mass) among them.

In 1831 a delegation of Flatheads and allied Nez Perce journeyed 1600 miles to St. Louis to
seek Blackrobes. The delegates’ deaths prevented the acquisitions of Blackrobes. In 1835,
and again in 1837, Old Ignace traveled to St. Louis to petition for Blackrobes. However, a
Sioux attack on the South Platte River resulted in the deaths of LaMousse and his traveling
companions.

An 1839 delegation encountered Fr. Peter De Smet, a Belgian Jesuit in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
and convinced him to come to the Flatheads. Arriving in 1840, De Smet was so impressed
with the eagerness of the Flatheads, their knowledge of Christianity, and their morals, he
returned to St. Louis to secure funding for the founding of Catholic Missions.

In rapid succession, De Smet of his fellow Jesuits founded missions among the Flatheads in
1841, the Coeur d’Alenes in 1842, the Kalispels in 1844 and the Colviles in 1845.
St. Ignatius Mission Parish was founded in 1845 by Fathers De Smet, S.J. and Adrian
Hoecken, S.J. along the Washington/Idaho border and moved to our present location in 1854.
The Mission, and the town which grew up around it, were the home to the first Jesuit
theologate and industrial arts school in Montana. The home to the first Catholic Sisters,
(1864), first Catholic school, and hospital in Montana. St. Ignatius Mission is the oldest
continually active Catholic parish, in the Jesuit tradition, in the West.

8th July 2018

 Cardinal Basil Hume (1923-1999)

Basil Hume OSB OM was an English Roman Catholic bishop. He was a monk and priest of
the English Benedictine monastery of Ampleforth Abbey and its abbot for 13 years until his
appointment as Archbishop of Westminster in 1976. His elevation to cardinal of the Roman
Catholic Church followed during the same year. From 1979 Hume served also as President
of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He held these appointments until
his death from cancer in 1999. His final resting place is at Westminster Cathedral in the
Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine.

In Jesus Christ our lives, all that we are and all that we do, find their true meaning. He who
became one of us, lived as we do, has made holy all that we are and all that we do, save, of
course, when we sin. He has made our joys and laughter holy, our daily tasks as well, and so
too our suffering and also our dying. These are now holy things, sanctified because he has
touched them. Human tragedies, the sorrows and pains of men, of women, of children, have
been given a special dignity; they contain the promise and the giving of a new life.
(Seventh Word, To be a Pilgrim, 1984)

1st July 2018

Mansur Hallaj (c. 858-922)

Mansur al-Hallaj was a Persian mystic, poet and teacher of Sufism. He is best known for his
saying: "I am the Truth" (Ana 'l-Ḥaqq), which many saw as a claim to divinity, while others
interpreted it as an instance of mystical annihilation of the ego which allows God to speak
through the individual. Al-Hallaj gained a wide following as a preacher before he became
implicated in power struggles of the Abbasid court and was executed after a long period of
confinement on religious and political charges. Although most of his Sufi contemporaries
disapproved of his actions, Hallaj later became a major figure in the Sufi tradition.
O You who are the object of my perception
And the hidden desire of my heart!

O complete Being, the Whole

Whom I love with all my parts,

I turn to You in longing and sorrow:

You for whom my heart is caught in the talons
Of a flying bird.

Immersed in pain, lost, amazed and dazed

I move from wilderness to wilderness.

Travelling, blinded by Your mystery,

Lightning fast and restlessly moving

Like the suddenness of a vision

That disappears as one wakes.

Carried away by the stream of awareness

For the pleasure of the Absolute.

(O You Who Are the Object)

24th June 2018

Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904-1984)

Karl Rahner was a German Jesuit priest and theologian who, alongside Henri de Lubac,
Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Yves Congar, is considered one of the most influential Roman
Catholic theologians of the 20th century. He was the brother of Hugo Rahner, also a Jesuit
scholar.

Rahner was born in Freiburg, at the time a part of the Grand Duchy of Baden, a state of the
German Empire; he died in Innsbruck, Austria.

Before the Second Vatican Council, Rahner had worked alongside Congar, de Lubac, and
Marie-Dominique Chenu, theologians associated with an emerging school of thought called
the Nouvelle Théologie, elements of which had been condemned in the encyclical Humani
generis of Pope Pius XII. Subsequently, however, the Second Vatican Council was much
influenced by his theology and his understanding of Catholic faith.

… to pray daily, to pray in the everyday, not to limit prayer to the infrequent lofty hours of
inner emotion and astonishment in which man begins to pray, as it were, automatically
because he is faithful and has not lost sight of God entirely. We must comprehend the
necessity of everyday prayer. For this everyday prayer is the prerequisite of the great and
noble hours of prayer.
(from The Need and Blessing of Prayer, 1997)

17th June 2018

William Blake (1757-1827)

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during
his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual
arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic
Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the
English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him
"far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at
number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his
entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham), he produced a diverse and symbolically
rich œuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence
itself".

Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held
in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical
and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been
characterised as part of the Romantic Movement and as "Pre-Romantic". Reverent of the
Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion),
Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.
Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable
relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such
as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work
makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him
as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with
contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".

… For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, turk or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

(from The Divine Image)

10th June 2018

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

Ronald Stuart Thomas, published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who
was noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales.
John Betjeman, in his 1955 introduction to Song at the Year's Turning, the first collection of
Thomas's poetry to be produced by a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be
remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He
was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century
To be crucified
again? To be made friends
with for his jeans and beard?
Gods are not put to death

any more. Their lot now

is with the ignored.
I think he still comes
stealthily as of old.
Invisible as a mutation
an echo of what the light
said, when nobody
attended; an impression

of eyes, quicker than

o be caught looking, but taken
on trust like flowers in the
dark country towards which we go.

(Coming)

3rd June 2108

Saint Ignatius of Antioch (+ c.107)

Ignatius of Antioch was an early Christian writer and bishop of Antioch. En route to Rome,
where he met his martyrdom, Ignatius wrote a series of letters. This correspondence now
forms a central part of the later collection known as the Apostolic Fathers. His letters also
serve as an example of early Christian theology. Important topics they address include
ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the role of bishops. In speaking of the authority of the
church, he was the first to use the phrase "Catholic Church" in writing, which is still in use to
this day.
Do not have Jesus Christ on your lips, and the world in your hearts.
(Epistles)

27th May 2018

 Blessed John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308)

John Duns, commonly called Duns Scotus, is generally considered to be one of the three most
important philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages (together with Thomas Aquinas
and William of Ockham). Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular
thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being," that existence
is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal
distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea
of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual.
Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the
Immaculate Conception of Mary.

Duns Scotus was given the scholastic accolade Doctor Subtilis (Subtle Doctor) for his
penetrating and subtle manner of thought. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1993.

O Lord our God! You are one in nature. You are one in number. Truly have you said that
besides you there is no God. For though many may be called gods or thought to be gods, you
alone are by nature God. You are the true God from whom, in whom and through whom all
things are; you are blessed forever. Amen!
(De Primo Principio or A TREATISE ON GOD AS FIRST PRINCIPLE)

20th May 2018

 Saint John Damscene (c.675-749)

Saint John of Damascus, also known as John Damascene, was a Syrian monk and priest.
Born and raised in Damascus, he died at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem.

A polymath whose fields of interest and contribution included law, theology, philosophy, and
music, he is said by some sources to have served as a Chief Administrator to the Muslim
caliph of Damascus before his ordination. He wrote works expounding the Christian faith,
and composed hymns which are still used both liturgically in Eastern Christian practice
throughout the world as well as in western Lutheranism at Easter. He is one of the Fathers of
the Eastern Orthodox Church and is best known for his strong defence of icons. The Catholic
Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, often referred to as the Doctor of the
Assumption due to his writings on the Assumption of Mary.

Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a a river and the Holy Ghost like
a sea, for the spring and the river and the sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root,
and the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The
Father is a sun with the Sun as its rays and the Holy Ghost as heat.

13th May 2018

Pierre Theilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who
trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He
conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and
consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir
Vernadsky's concept of noosphere.
Although many of Teilhard's writings were censored by the Catholic Church during his
lifetime because of his views on original sin, Teilhard has been posthumously praised by
Pope Benedict XVI and other eminent Catholic figures, and his theological teachings were
cited by Pope Francis in the 2015 encyclical, Laudato si'. The response to his writings by
evolutionary biologists has been, with some exceptions, decidedly negative.

The age of nations has passed. Now, unless we wish to perish, we must shake off our old
prejudices and build the Earth. The more scientifically I regard the world, the less can I see
any possible biological future for it except in the active consciousness of its unity.

6th May 2018

Rabbi Rami Shapiro (1951- )

Rami M. Shapiro, commonly called “Rabbi Rami”, is an award-winning author, teacher, and
speaker on the subjects of liberal Judaism and contemporary spirituality. He served for ten
years as Adjunct Professor of Religion at Middle Tennessee State University.
To me, religions are like languages: no language is true or false; all languages are of human
origin; each language reflects and shapes the mind-set of the civilization that speaks it; there
are things you can say in one language that you cannot say or cannot say as well in another;
and the more languages you know, the more nuanced your understanding of life. Judaism is
my mother tongue, yet in matters of the spirit I strive to be multi-lingual. In the end, however,
the deepest language of the soul is silence.

29th April 2018

Gregory E. Sterling
Gregory E. Sterling is The Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of
New Testament at Yale Divinity School. The author of several books, he concentrates his
research in Hellenistic Judaism, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Luke-
Acts. His next book, for Eerdmans, is called Defining the Present through the Past

The Ends of the Earth

I have spent a good deal of my life studying Luke-Acts in the New Testament. In my opinion,
the two works offer a self-definition of Christianity within the larger ancient Greco-Roman
world. The author did not think locally but globally. The Gospel opens and closes in
Jerusalem. Acts opens in Jerusalem and closes in Rome, a symbolic geographical move. The
author set this up at the beginning of Acts when Jesus said to the apostles: “You will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”15 The most
fascinating aspect of this declaration about “the ends of the earth” is that it is left open. Paul
is taken to Rome where he awaits trial, but never comes to trial. As readers we want to know
what happened to him. The author does not tell us. Why not? I do not believe it is because the
author did not know Paul’s fate, but that the author wanted us to understand that the story was
not over. It continued. This was the author’s way to challenge us to continue the story “to the
ends of the earth.”

We live in a world that the author of Acts never imagined but did allow for when taking the
story to the ends of the earth. I will say to you what I say to the students at Yale Divinity
School. Christianity is changing in our globalized world; I do not know what it will look like
in 50 years, but I know that you will write its history with your lives. Write it well.

22nd April 2018

Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-13th August 662)

Maximus the Confessor, also known as Maximus the Theologian and Maximus of
Constantinople, was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar.

In his early life, Maximus was a civil servant, and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor
Heraclius. However, he gave up this life in the political sphere to enter into the monastic life.
Maximus had studied diverse schools of philosophy, and certainly what was common for his
time, the Platonic dialogues, the works of Aristotle, and numerous later Platonic
commentators on Aristotle and Plato, like Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus.
When one of his friends began espousing the Christological position known as
Monothelitism, Maximus was drawn into the controversy, in which he supported an
interpretation of the Chalcedonian formula on the basis of which it was asserted that Jesus
had both a human and a divine will. Maximus is venerated in both the Eastern Orthodox and
Roman Catholic Churches. He was eventually persecuted for his Christological positions;
following a trial, his tongue and right hand were mutilated.

He was then exiled and died on August 13, 662 in Tsageri, in present-day Georgia. However,
his theology was upheld by the Third Council of Constantinople and he was venerated as a
saint soon after his death. It is highly uncommon among the saints that he has two feast days:
the 13th of August and the 21st of January. His title of Confessor means that he suffered for
the Christian faith, but was not directly martyred. The Life of the Virgin, the only extant copy
of which is in a Georgian translation, is commonly, albeit mistakenly, attributed to him, and
is considered to be one of the earliest complete biographies of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

He is the subject of the Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthazar’s Cosmic Liturgy.

The sacred Scripture, taken as a whole, is like a human being. The Old Testament is the body
and the New is the soul, the meaning it contains, the spirit. From another viewpoint we can
say that the entire sacred Scripture, Old and New Testament, has two aspects: the historical
content which corresponds to the body, and the deep meaning, the goal at which the mind
should aim, which corresponds to the soul. If we think of human beings, we see they are
mortal in their visible properties but immortal in their invisible qualities.

So with Scripture. It contains the letter, the visible text, which is transitory. But it also
contains the spirit hidden beneath the letter, and this is never extinguished and this ought to
be the object of our contemplation. Think of human beings again. If they want to be perfect,
they master their passions and mortify the flesh. So with Scripture. If it is heard in a spiritual
way, it trims the text, like circumcision.

Paul says: `Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every
day.’ [2 Cor. 4:16] We can say that also of Scripture. The further the letter is divorced from
it, the more relevance the spirit acquires. The more the shadows of the literal sense retreat,
the more the shining truth of the faith advances. And this is exactly why Scripture was
composed.

15th April 2018

Maurice Zundel (1897-1975)

Fr. Maurice Zundel was one of the great, if often-forgotten, theologians of the last century.
Sometime student of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, he wrote various works of Catholic
philosophy in conversation with existentialism, Protestantism, and personalism. This wide-
ranging and erudite scholarship led soon-to-be-Saint Paul VI to call him “a mystical
genius.” However, he is best known in the Anglophone world for his writing on the liturgy.
“I am another”, this expression of Rimbaud’s, that we need to adopt again, replies to an
extraordinary intuition of what a person who was radically freed from any adherence to self
could be and so able to establish a pure relationship with others.
(Je suis un autre, 1969, 1997)

8th April 2018

Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM (1934-)

Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap. is an Italian Catholic priest in the Order of Friars
Minor Capuchin and theologian. He has served as the Preacher to the Papal Household
since 1980, under Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.
In contemplating Jesus in the Sacrament of the altar, we actualize the prophecy made at the
moment of Jesus’s death on the Cross: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced.”
(John 19:37). This contemplation is itself a prophecy for it anticipates what we shall do
forever in the heavenly Jerusalem.
(The Eucharist, Our Sanctification, 1993)

Easter Sunday 2018

Laura Kazlas
(Coordinator of Prison Ministry, Diocese of Portland, Oregon)

What do you think Saint Peter felt as he stood there looking at the empty burial cloths inside
Christ’s tomb? Shock? Disbelief? The gospel said that they did not yet understand the
Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. This was surely something he would need some
time to digest. At that moment, Peter did not have all the facts. He didn’t understand
anything. But, that was ok. He didn’t have to. Saint Peter simply loved the Lord Jesus
enough to follow him anywhere. Remember this verse?

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment,
and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” ~ 1 Jn 4:18

Saint Peter’s love for Jesus reached perfection the moment he stepped into the empty
tomb. Out of fear, Saint Peter may have initially denied Jesus three times, but that was in the
past. Peter’s love for Jesus conquered his fear when he stepped into the empty tomb. Easter
morning was a new beginning for him, and for the whole world. It’s a new beginning for us
today as well. The past is the past. Our sins have been forgiven by Jesus Christ’s death on
the cross and we need to be like Saint Peter, and let them go. The last sentence of today’s
first reading for mass today says that, “To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone
who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

We also need to let go of our fear of death. Jesus defeated death. He rose from the dead, to
eternal life and we will too if we believe in him. The second reading today says that, “When
Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

We were created for eternal life, and there really is no such thing as death. Death is simply a
door through which we pass, into eternal life. We have nothing to fear. Jesus loves us,
forgives us, and journeys with us throughout our lives, and into eternal life as well. This is the
good news of Easter. This is our Easter joy!

(April 20, 2014)

Palm Sunday 2018

Pope Francis

To enter into the mystery demands that we not be afraid of reality: that we not be locked into
ourselves, that we not flee from what we fail to understand, that we not close our eyes to
problems or deny them, that we not dismiss our questions.

(4 April 2015)

18th March 2018

Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591)

(Drawing of the Crucifixion by John of the Cross)

John of the Cross was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation, a Spanish mystic, a Roman
Catholic saint, a Carmelite friar and a priest, who was born at Fontiveros, Old Castile.
John of the Cross is known for his writings. Both his poetry and his studies on the growth of
the soul are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all
Spanish literature. He was canonized as a saint in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. He is one of
the thirty-six Doctors of the Church.

22. The bride has entered

The sweet garden of her desire,
And she rests in delight,
Laying her neck
On the gentle arms of her beloved.

23. Beneath the apple tree:

There I took you for my own,
There I offered you my hand,
And restored you,
Where your mother was corrupted.

(Stanza between the Soul and the Bridegroom)

11th March 2018

Saint Augustine (354-430)

Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian theologian and philosopher from Numidia whose
writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was
the bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa and is viewed as one of the most important
Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most
important works are The City of God, On Christian Doctrine and Confessions.

According to his contemporary Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith". In
his youth he was drawn to Manichaeism, later to neo-Platonism. After his baptism and
conversion to Christianity in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and
theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing that the grace of
Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin
and made seminal contributions to the development of just war theory. When the Western
Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of
God, distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval
worldview. The segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined
by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with
Augustine's On the Trinity.
Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou
wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly
among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These
things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou
didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and
didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odours and I drew in my breath;
and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I
burned for thy peace.
(Confessions)

4th March 2018

Fr Thomas Keating, OCSO (1923- )

Fr. Thomas Keating is a founding member and the spiritual guide of Contemplative
Outreach. Fr. Keating is one of the principal architects and teachers of the Christian
contemplative prayer movement and, in many ways, Contemplative Outreach is a
manifestation of his longtime desire to contribute to the recovery of the contemplative
dimension of Christianity.

Fr. Keating's interest in contemplative prayer began during his freshman year at Yale
University in 1940 when he became aware of the Church's history and of the writings of
Christian mystics. Prompted by these studies and time spent in prayer and meditation, he
experienced a profound realization that, on a spiritual level, the Scriptures call people to a
personal relationship with God. Fr. Keating took this call to heart. He transferred to
Fordham University in New York and, while waiting to be drafted for service in World War
II, he received a deferment to enter seminary. Shortly after graduating from an accelerated
program at Fordham, Fr. Keating entered an austere monastic community of the Trappist
Order in Valley Falls, Rhode Island in January of 1944, at the age of 20. He was ordained a
priest in June of 1949.

In 1984, Fr. Thomas Keating along with Gustave Reininger and Edward Bednar, co-founded
Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., an international, ecumenical spiritual network that teaches the
practice of Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina, a method of prayer drawn from the
Christian contemplative tradition. Contemplative Outreach provides a support system for
those on the contemplative path through a wide variety of resources, workshops, and retreats.

Fr. Keating also helped found the Snowmass Interreligious Conference in 1982 and is a past
president of the Temple of Understanding and of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue among
other interreligious activities.
Fr. Keating currently lives at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.

Just as a healthy cell in the human body can heal or replace dying cells, so we can bring
peace, healing and wholeness to other cells in Christ’s mystical body.

…………

Daily life tests the sincerity and authenticity of our spiritual journey. We are brought to a
peaceful contentment with the faults we cannot overcome: cf. Saint Paul’s thorn in the flesh
(2 Corinthians 12:7). Saint Paul ends up boasting of his infirmities.

The spiritual journey fosters an ever-increasing trust in God’s loving care and in his total
identification with us in all the events of our lives.

(Reflections on the Unknowable, ch. 20: What is Centering Prayer? 2014)

25th February 2018

Saint Wulfstan (c. 1008-1095)

Wulfstan was Bishop of Worcester from 1062 to 1095. He was the last surviving pre-
Conquest bishop and the only English-born bishop after 1075. Wulfstan is a Christian saint.
A social reformer, Wulfstan struggled to bridge the gap between the old and new regimes,
and to alleviate the suffering of the poor. He was a strong opponent of the slave trade, and
together with Lanfranc, was mainly responsible for ending the trade from Bristol.
Wulfstan founded the Great Malvern Priory, and undertook much large-scale rebuilding
work, including Worcester Cathedral, Hereford Cathedral, Tewkesbury Abbey, and many
other churches in the Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester areas.
O Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
Establish my heart in your will.
Grant me true repentance for my sins:
give a right faith and true charity,
Patience in adversity,
And moderation in prosperity.
(Anglo-Saxon prayer book)

18th February 2018

Tertullian (c. 155-c. 240)

Tertullian, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, was a prolific early Christian author
from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. Of Berber origin, he was the first Christian
author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was an early
Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian
Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" and "the founder of
Western theology."

Though conservative in his worldview, Tertullian originated new theological concepts and
advanced the development of early Church doctrine. He is perhaps most famous for being the
first writer in Latin known to use the term trinity (Latin: trinitas).

Unlike many Church fathers, Tertullian was never recognized as a saint by the Eastern or
Western catholic tradition churches, as several of his teachings on issues such as the clear
subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, and his condemnation of remarriage for
widows and of fleeing from persecution, contradicted the doctrines of these traditions.

It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature that every man should worship
according to his own convictions. One man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man. It
is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should
lead us.
(Sacred Writings of Tertullian)

11th February 2018

The Jesus Prayer

The prayer has been widely taught and discussed throughout the history of the Orthodox
Church. The ancient and original form did not include the words, "a sinner," which were
added later. It is often repeated continually as a part of personal ascetic practice, its use
being an integral part of the eremitic tradition of prayer known as Hesychasm (Ancient
Greek: "to keep stillness"). The prayer is particularly esteemed by the spiritual fathers of this
tradition as a method of opening up the heart and bringing about the Prayer of the Heart.
The Prayer of The Heart is considered to be the Unceasing Prayer that the apostle Paul
advocates in the New Testament. St. Theophan the Recluse regarded the Jesus Prayer
stronger than all other prayers by virtue of the power of the Holy Name of Jesus.

While its tradition, on historical grounds, also belongs to the Eastern Catholics, and there
have been a number of Roman Catholic texts on the Jesus Prayer, its practice has never
achieved the same popularity in the Western Church as in the Eastern Orthodox Church,
although it can be said on the Anglican Rosary.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

4th February 2018

Saint John Bosco (1815-1888)

Saint John Bosco was an Italian Roman Catholic priest, educator and writer of the 19th
century. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the effects of
industrialization and urbanization, he dedicated his life to the betterment and education of
street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth. He developed teaching
methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian
Preventive System.

A follower of the spirituality and philosophy of Saint Francis de Sales, Bosco was an ardent
Marian devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title Mary Help of Christians. He later
dedicated his works to De Sales when he founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, based in
Turin.[6] Together with Maria Domenica Mazzarello, he founded the Institute of the
Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, a religious congregation of nuns dedicated to the care
and education of poor girls. He taught Dominic Savio, of whom he wrote a biography that
helped the young boy be canonized.

Bosco established a network of organizations and centres to carry on his work. Following his
beatification in 1929, he was canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope
Pius XI in 1934.

If a well-known and trustworthy person were to go to a public square and tell all the idlers
loitering there that on a certain hill they would find a gold mine and could take all they
wanted, do you think anyone would shrug his shoulders and say he did not care? They’d be
dashing there as fast as they could!

Well, now, doesn’t the tabernacle hold the most precious treasure ever to be found on earth or
in heaven? Unfortunately, there are many who cannot see it because they are blind. Yet our
faith unerringly tells us that endless riches are to be found there. People sweat and toil to
make money, and yet, in the tabernacle dwells the Lord of the universe. He will grant you
what you ask, if you really need it.

Isn’t Our Lord Jesus Christ Lord and Master of all? Go to Him then. Ask and it shall be given
you; knock and it shall be opened to you! Jesus longs to grant you favors, especially those
you need for your soul.

28th January 2018

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Saint Thomas Aquinas OP was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the
Church. He was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition
of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor
Communis. The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in
present-day Lazio.

He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism; of
which he argued that reason is found in God. His influence on Western thought is
considerable, and much of modern philosophy developed or opposed his ideas, particularly
in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory. Unlike many currents in
the Church of the time, Thomas embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle—whom he
called "the Philosopher"—and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the
principles of Christianity. His best-known works are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa
contra Gentiles. His commentaries on Scripture and on Aristotle also form an important part
of his body of work. Furthermore, Thomas is distinguished for his Eucharistic hymns, which
form a part of the Church's liturgy.

Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and
philosophers. Pope Benedict XV declared: "This (Dominican) Order ... acquired new lustre
when the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honoured
with the special praises of the Pontiffs, the master and patron of Catholic schools."
His remains are kept in the church of the Jacobins in Toulouse and his Memorial is
celebrated today, 28th January.

Many cry to the Lord that they may win riches, that they may avoid losses; they cry that their
family may be established, they ask for temporal happiness, for worldly dignities; and, lastly,
they cry for bodily health, which is the patrimony of the poor. For these and suchlike things
many cry to the Lord; hardly one cries for the Lord Himself! How easy it is for a man to
desire all manner of things from the Lord and yet not desire the Lord Himself! As though the
gift could be sweeter than the Giver!

14th January 2018

Jean Vanier (1928- )

A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to
achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new
hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community
is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his
insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite
body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and
forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.

(Community and Growth)

7th January 2018

Jean Vanier (1928- )

Jean Vanier is a Canadian Catholic philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. In 1964 he

founded L'Arche, an international federation of communities spread over 37 countries, for
people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them. Subsequently, in 1971, he
co-founded Faith and Light with Marie-Hélène Mathieu, which also works for people with
developmental disabilities, their families, and friends in over 80 countries. He continues to
live as a member of the original L'Arche community in Trosly-Breuil, France.

A desire to belong

At the heart of Vanier’s theology is the human desire to belong. Human beings are made for
deep relationships; they are made for community. As he puts it: “The longer we journey on
the road to inner healing and wholeness, the more the sense of belonging grows and deepens.
The sense is not just one of belonging to others and to a community. It is a sense of belonging
to the universe, to the earth, to the air, to the water, to everything that lives, to all humanity.”
In order to belong somewhere a person has to be missed when they are not there. Vanier’s
theology of community and belonging requires that those whom we have chosen to name
"disabled", should have a place of belonging within the community of the friends of Jesus. If
they are not missed they do not belong; if they do not belong there is no community.

Strength in weakness

Vanier believes that the great reversal that is the gospel is lived out in the lives of people with
intellectual disabilities. Here we see clearly that the weak become strong and that the
foolishness of this world turns out to be the glory of God. In Jesus, Vanier sees a paradigm of
strength in weakness: “Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked,
the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the
poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.” In the weakness and vulnerability of the
profoundly intellectually disabled Vanier discovers Jesus. If such lives are truly fully human,
then "being human" can no longer be understood in terms of power, strength, intellect and
ability. To be with the intellectually disabled is to realise what it means to be human.
“Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.”

The way of the heart

The way of the heart is a way of putting people first; of moving beyond the boundaries of the
label of “intellectual disability” and putting the person-as-person. The "way of the heart" is a
way of encountering people; a way of being with and learning from people with intellectual
disabilities. As Vanier says: “Power and cleverness call forth admiration but also a certain
separation, a sense of distance; we are reminded of who we are not, of what we cannot do. On
the other hand, sharing weaknesses and needs calls us together into “oneness.” We welcome
into our heart those who love us. In this communion, we discover the deepest part of our
being: the need to be loved and to have someone who trusts and appreciates us and who cares
least of all about our capacity to work or to be clever and interesting. When we discover we
are loved in this way, the masks or barriers behind which we hide are dropped; new life
flows. We no longer have to prove our worth; we are free to be ourselves. We find a new
wholeness, a new inner unity.” The way of the heart is the embodiment of the Spirit of God’s
love.

"God takes time for the trivial"

Vanier’s embodied theology requires that we see time differently. We are tempted to treat
time as we do other commodities. We waste time, we spend time, we lose time and we make
time. Vanier asks us to look at time differently; to become friends of time. In his words: “The
friend of time doesn't spend all day saying: 'I haven't got time.' He doesn't fight with time. He
accepts it and cherishes it." Vanier reminds us that in God’s time those people whom the
world refuses to spend time with become the very focus of God’s attention. God, as Stanley
Hauerwas has put it, “takes time for the trivial,” and those who follow Jesus, God incarnate,
are expected to do the same. There are no lesser lives in the Kingdom of God. Spending time
doing what the world assumes to be trivial is the essence of the way of the heart and the
spirituality of L’Arche.

A Spirituality of friendship

All this adds up to what we might describe as a spirituality of friendship. By the term
"spirituality" I simply mean the outworking of a person’s beliefs in the day-to-day life
experience of believers. Vanier’s spirituality of friendship seeks after community within
which people are made to feel that they belong. Within such a spirituality those whom society
considers weak are seen to be strong; those who are considered vulnerable are respected and
protected. Their voices are closely listened to as their hearts are embraced and loved through
friendships that are quite literally inspired by the Spirit of Jesus. Vanier’s spirituality of
friendship reminds us that friends take time to be with one another; not just in terms of
physical presence but in heart-to-heart relationships within which disability exists, but it
really doesn’t matter. Learning how to live in such ways is Vanier’s witness and his gift to
theology, church and society.