De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

For those who understand French, this clip is magnificent: a French author who has suffered the deaths of two daughters, asked to comment on a quote from Psalm 33 - "God is close to the broken-hearted". She explains quite beautifully how she has experienced both those who simply didn't know what to do or say when they met her in the aftermath of the tragic events and others - like the nurse she mentions - who brought consolation by simply being there at her side, keeping her company, manifesting God's loving presence through their sensitivity and compassion, but barely saying a word. She finishes by describing such an encounter, saying,   "An encounter between two human beings; one whose heart is bleeding, the other whose heart is open."   There is immense beauty in her words and in her calm dignity.      

The following article written by my sister on her " Traces Of Hope " blog is nothing to do with my previous article here but is everything to do with her life story... and the article - especially the final paragraph - is quietly wonderful.  "Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of  When Bad Things Happen to Good People , dealt with the personal tragedy of a child who dies of an incurable condition: progeria, the aging disease. This tragedy caused him to rethink everything he had once felt so secure in believing about suffering, prayer, and God.  He writes that prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us, a sentiment that echoes the writing of Christian author and novelist C.S. Lewis. Although God answers our prayers, the answer may not be what we want to hear, or may not be the miracle we hoped for. After his son Aaron’s diagnosis at age 3, Kushner prayed fervently and constantly for a cure.  It didn’t materialize. Aaron died at age 14 weighing no more than 25 pounds, ...

I mentioned earlier today that I feel our Mum is willingly going through an extended Calvary experience for the sake of our family, Dad first of all, offering it up for us. I do not pretend to understand suffering or want to suggest that it is in itself "good", or to be wished for. It is not. Though I do believe that good can come from it through the way that a person lives their suffering.  Mum seems to be drinking just enough water and medication to keep herself alive for now. She has been bed-bound for nearly 5 years now, due in part to the cumulative effects of epilepsy drugs she has had to take for nearly 30 years, following a brain tumour which left her epileptic. She has had many highs and lows these past 4 years (we thought she was near her end back in 2007... that's a whole other story - and an incredible one at that - which I hope to get round to telling sometime), but this time it does look different. She is barely conscious, has refused all solid foods for m...

How can I write anything right now... given what our brothers and sisters in Haiti are going through? Today we heard that 2 of our own Brothers in Port-au-Prince died when their community house collapsed. Another is badly injured. But we are not alone. Other congregations have lost whole communities, the seminary was brought to the ground burying a large number of seminarians, over 100 priests have also perished. But what of the laity, especially the poor? At least we in our congregation have a built-in support network of other communities within the congregation that kicks in at times like this. What of the tens of thousands? At times like this, what can one say? Cheap platitudes make my skin crawl. All we can do is pray, and seek to suffer-with in com-passion. But, re-reading what I wrote on that train journey in Brittany, I feel that it is actually appropriate to offer the final part of those thoughts right now. I hope you may see why... ****************** ... Though we betr...

I've started to translate into English some of what my friend Fr. Gustave says on the dvd that I mention in my previous post so that I can use it in my R.E. classes. It's wonderful stuff, but I fear that my translation does not even come anyway close to doing him justice. You have to hear him deliver it with the enthusiasm and passion that inhabits him (see the video link also in the previous post). Anyway, here goes a few extracts: Death + Resurrection God is all-powerful. He created a natural world (the universe) which is not all-powerful but that does have the power to inflict death as a natural event. Through the resurrection, God offers us victory over the natural world in Jesus’ body, the body of a man that is at the same time God in human form. So, if nature/death defeated Jesus Christ (God-made-flesh) in his body through the crucifixion, in that same body death has been defeated by the resurrection. In the death + resurrection of Jesus, God himself passes throug...

There are times in all of our lives when things seem to be going just swimmingly, and there are others when you feel that things just can't get worse. You feel pummeled, punch drunk, staggering from one day to the next just praying that you can get through it without breaking down. Events conspire to leave you stressed, angry, upset... perhaps even more so when the source of these feelings comes from things that have happened to others that you love dearly. Your compassion for their suffering risks turning into something darker, angry, something that eats you up from within. Well, myself and members of my family have been through, and are still going through this type of experience. The tragedy of my 24 year-old nephew's suicide last Feb. has its source in other hidden tragedies that go back nearly 60 years, many of which have only come to light in the last few years. This purging of darkness that so many of us in my family have been carrying deep in our hearts has been incredi...