Soul Food for The Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – 9th June 2024
The ‘Bogeyman’ and ‘Monsters Under the Bed’ are common mythical creations to encourage, or some might say, frighten little children into good behaviour. In my house a variation was born about two years ago. I was trying to get my then two- and three-year olds to go to sleep or at least to stay under the bed clothes on a frosty, wintry evening, when suddenly I heard myself saying: “You better stay in bed or the Cold Monster will get you.” The Cold Monster has been with us ever since. But his job description has changed. He has morphed from an enforcer of good behaviour to being the scapegoat for any misbehaviour or indeed anything that goes wrong. A common refrain is: “It wasn’t me; it was the Cold Monster.”
Author: - May 30, 2024
Soul Food for Corpus Christi, 2nd June 2024
In today’s reading, we witnessed where Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord: ‘We will do everything that the LORD has told us’ proclaiming that ‘This is the blood of the covenant, that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his’. As seasons change from Spring to Summer, I recall Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, where the summer concerto expresses that ‘Under a hard season, fired up by the sun...
Author: - May 20, 2024
Soul Food for Trinity Sunday (26th May) 2024
“You must now know, and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other” (Deuteronomy 4:39). Today we celebrate who God is. As the first reading reminds us, there is one God; and that God has been revealed to us in the three persons of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Author: - May 16, 2024
Soul Food for Pentecost Sunday (19th May) 2024
“Strumpet City” has a special place in my heart, as it has for many Dubliners. A story of our city and its wonderful people, the novel concludes with a death in a tenement building. The priest is called. Saying a prayer quietly, he “began the usual decade of the rosary. At first only those in the room responded. Then to his surprise, for he had forgotten they were there, he heard the responses being taken up by those outside. The sound grew and filled the house. From those lining the stairway outside and the landing and the hallway above, voices rose and fell in rhythmical waves. The sound flowed about him, filled him, lifted him up like a great tide”. I love that image of holiness. In the saddest of circumstances there is so much grace. This passage captures something of the quiet magnificence of the Feast of Pentecost.
Author: -
