Childishness or the Spirit of Childhood? Jesus says: ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.’ [Luke 18:16] If that is how things are, growing up means, loss. Why should I desire to grow up if adulthood deprives me of the right to the kingdom? Can you explain why God should have given us physical development which favours vice, not virtue? And for what
Martyrdom throughout the Length of Days Martyrdom means bearing witness to God. Every soul that seeks in pureness of heart to know God and obeys the commandments of God is a martyr, bearing witness by life or by words. In fact even if it is not a matter of shedding blood, the soul is pouring out its faith because it is by faith that the soul will be separated from the body before a person
Joy an Uneasy Bedfellow Augustine said: ‘The world’s joy is vanity. We long for it to come, but when it has come we fail to hold on to it. Better the sorrow of the one who suffers unjustly than the joy of the one who acts unjustly.’ Jerome says: ‘The wise person curbs the smile on his face by the gravity of his behaviour. ‘If fortune smiles on you do not brag about it; and
Saint Patrick, the Enlightener of Ireland was born around 385, the son of Calpurnius, a Roman decurion (an official responsible for collecting taxes). He lived in the village of Bannavem Taberniae, which may have been located at the mouth of the Severn River in Wales. The district was raided by pirates when Patrick was sixteen, and he was one of those taken captive. He was brought to Ireland and sold as a slave, and was
Tears, not Sorrows When you hear me speak of tears, you need not think of sorrow. The tears of which I am speaking bring more joy than all the laughter of the world can gain for you. Do you doubt my words? Then listen to St Luke who tells us how the apostles, after being beaten with rods by order of the Sanhedrin, were filled with joy. [Acts 5:41] Clearly that joy was not the
The Soul’s Dizziness There are two different roads, one broad and easy, the other hard and narrow. And there are two guides vying with each other to attract the traveler’s attention. Now that we are grown to years of discretion we see that life is an amalgam of vice and virtue. The soul by casting its gaze first on one and then on the other can calculate the consequences of each. The life of the
Before the Ship Sinks An illness that has become chronic, like a habit of wrong-doing that has become ingrained is very hard to heal. If after that, as very often happens, the habit turns into second nature, a cure is out of the question. So the ideal would be to have no contact with evil. But there is another possibility: to distance yourself from evil, to run away from it as if from a poisonous
Has the Lord Abandoned us after Telling us to Set Sail? In all his dealings with us the Lord teaches us how to live on this earth. There is not a person in this world who is not a voyager, even if not all are anxious to return to the homeland. In the course of this voyage the waves and the storms make us seasick. But at least we are in the ship. Outside the
Life is a Dream with Many Changes of Scene I am not telling a lie: human life is a dream. In our dreams we look without seeing, we listen without hearing, we taste and touch without tasting or touching, we speak without saying anything, we walk without moving. We seem to be moving normally even though we stay still and to be making our habitual gestures even though we are not. The mind invents realities
Better not to be Born? Homer says that humanity is weak and worried. Theognis, the Sicilian, cries out: ‘The best fate for a person would be not to be born, not to see the rays of the sun.’ Euripides is fully in agreement with them: when someone is born, everyone ought to join together in weeping for him. How much misery he has come to suffer! On the other hand, the one who dies is
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