To Become a ManThe death of Gérard Philipe on 25 November 1959 provoked national grief in France. In a recentish book, Jérôme Garcin revisits the actor’s singular life and death. He contends that Philipe personified the need for catharsis after World War II, Read More
St GeorgeThe story of St George was popularised by James of Voragine, a Dominican contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas. It seems extravagant at first, but once we cotton on to James’s style of story-telling, we find his account is far from Read More
Dealing with StuffJim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother ends with a scene in which two twins stand before a garage that is full of the things of their parents, mysteriously deceased. Considering the relics of these two lives and of their own heritage, Read More
A Future for Empathy?This conversation with Annachiara Valle was published in Famiglia Cristiana on 18 April. It focuses on the publication of Illuminati da una gloria nascosta, which brings together the conferences of this year’s Lent retreat in the Vatican. You can find the Italian text of the interview here. Below is an English translation. Why did you focus the retreat on Psalm 90? It was simply the first idea that occurred to me when I received the phone call from the Secretariat of State – an utter surprise – inviting me to give the retreat. Psalm 90 is a structural element in the liturgy of Lent. I know and love St Bernard’s reading of this text. So it made sense to make use of it. The Psalm begins with the words: ‘My refuge and my strength, my God in whom I trust.’ Is this refuge a kind of resignation, or is it something else? A Christian can never be resigned. A Christian is a person committed to the reality of a world the Lord is presently saving. We have our role to play in this great project, at once divine and human. It’s worth stressing that in the Latin version that St Bernard used, and on which I based my exposition, the term is not ‘refuge’ but rather ‘help’. The Psalm speaks of ‘living within the help of the Most High’, Qui habitat in adiutorio Altissimi. It suggests that we can make God’s help our habitat, and that that’s how we learn to live in this world in a specifically Christian way. So to inhabit this world as a Cristian is not an experience of passivity? Absolutely not. But how can we go about this, especially where there’s war? We must beware of counsels that are too general and banal. We need to be attentive to the enormous challenge of witnessing to the Gospel in situations of devastation and war. That is why I stress, in the book, the theme of peace. St Paul tells us that Christ is our peace. We are called to be bearers of that peace. As far as we can, we must, even in violent circumstances, resist the temptation to yield to bitterness, violence, aggression, and hate, remaining open to the possibility of reconciliation, of the transformation of situations of conflict. By our presence, by Christ’s presence in us, in so far as we are possessed of his peace, we can be instruments of his work even in terribly difficult conditions. In your book you also speak of the instrumentalisation of God’s name for purposes of war. A relevant theme right now. Absolutely. I state very clearly that it stands for a distortion. Resistance to any instrumentalisation of the vocabulary and symbols of faith represents a major challenge for today’s Christians. Which are the risks involved? The great risk is idolatry. In so far as we we construct a God on the basis of our imagination, we use the terminology of faith to make a little god, a protector god, a tribal god who protects me and my interests. The Biblical revelation goes against this tendency, trying to make us see, precisely, that God is the God of all, an inconceivably great God who will not let himself be enclosed in our categories. All the struggles against idolatry in the Old and New Testament are directed against the tendency to reduce God to the mere patron of my ideas. We see this idolatry at work today at the highest levels. We may think of Trump, but also of Netanyahu, who says that the extension of Israel’s borders means the coming of the Messiah. How to resist such misrepresentation? By living out a Christian witness credibly, upholding the Biblical revelation of God incarnate in Christ Jesus without yielding to dangerous simplification. Another important theme in the book is hope. How to hope in a world in crisis? Hope is trust in things unseen. Hope is born when I ascertain that the present reality of a given situation, thing or person may not ultimately define the reality of this situation, thing or person. Hope is born of knowledge that there’s always a potential for growth and maturing, for conversion and even sanctification. I believe the basis of hope is a personal experience of the possibility of pardon – even the smallest experience of what grace might amount to, of what mercy is, and the utterly unmerited gift of God’s love. If I have, even in small ways, entertained such experience, I can with some authority convey the certainty that, well, if I can receive such illumination, then anyone can. You develop, too, the notion of truth in a time marked by fake news and the manipulation of media. How can we come to discern the truth? By facing the media with caution, intelligence and a critical sense. By nurturing our capacity for a healthy judgement of opinions and things. This is hard today, on account of the speed of the exchange of ideas. Precisely for this reason we need to be a little revolutionary – I’d say it should be our preferential option to resist acceleration. We need the courage to take a step back in order to get an overall view of given situations, given political and cultural phenomena. We need a clear, lucid, objective, well-founded view of reality as it is, without being seduced by illusions or others’ projections. For this we need time, and a certain slowness. Can we ourselves be tempted to manipulate? It’s a temptation everyone is exposed to. Given our digital resources and social media, any individual has ample means to project their own reality, personality, appearance, and blissful happiness. These projections do not necessarily correspond to what we are in fact. We need to be honest with ourselves and ask if we have the courage to be truthful. We can, indeed we must, begin modestly, in our circle of family and friends. We must practise the art of being truthful. You go on to speak of freedom? How can freedom be understood? As the Gospels present it to us, freedom ever unfolds in view of communion. Freedom is not a matter of stepping away from obligations. To be free is not about being disconnected. In a Christian optic, being free is a matter of speaking a lasting ‘Yes’ that involves accepting a task, a responsibility for the common good, for the good of others. How can we transmit this value to the young? Above all by living it out. It seems to me that young people are tired of rhetoric, tired of a multitude of words. They’re impressed, however, by the example of a faithful life, by people who remain faithful to an ideal, a relationship, a responsibility – by a couple that remains together, by a priest who fully lives out his consecration without compromise, with generosity. They are impressed by the example of religious who choose to stick to their commitment, to the ‘Yes’ pronounced once for all. The young are well aware of the grandeur and dignity implicit in saying a ‘Yes’ that is for life. In our contemporary climate, marked by much instability and much anxiety, there’s a search for fixed points of reference. The young ask: ‘What can I build my life on? Which are the values that last? Is there a foundation able to support my hopes and aspirations?’ If we, as individuals and communities within the Church, testify that, yes, such a foundation exists, then it can have massive impact. Your book originates as a Lenten retreat. Why go back to it in retrospect? St Benedict, in his Rule, says that the life of a monk or nun, or, for that matter, of any Christian desiring to live their faith coherently, should be a continuous Lent. He did not mean that their existence should be morose, terribly austere, marked by exaggerated mortification. Rather, he indicated a form of existence always oriented towards Christ’s victory over death. The mystery we consider during Lent in a concentrated way is no less the mystery of Christian life as such: Christ’s Paschal victory – his victory over sin, over all that which ties us to death, in order to carry us, rather, towards life in fullness, towards beatitude and eternal life. How can we practise abstinence and fasting in a frenetic, consumerist world? Look around! We’re surrounded by fasting cures, fitness centres, dieting campaigns. The secular, even atheist, imagination is more than open to offers of self-improvement: we want to look good; to be able still to wear outfits we bought last year; to be able to go to the beach without shame. These are, in a way, propositions inviting us to become better versions of what we are now. What the Christian faith offers is infinitely more interesting and joyful than simply the prospect of going to the beach with our head held high. To live Lent well is also a matter of slowing down. We realise that we can in fact get on perfectly well without rushing along, like everyone else, at a mad pace. That mad pace is not compulsory. In this area, too, we must uphold the freedom we have to find our own rhythm. By slowing down, do we become better able to consider the world’s wounds? Yes. And not only that. We need the honesty, humility, and realism to recognise, first of all, our own wounds. The first step is about not hiding them from ourselves. Then we can face the central Gospel question: ‘Do you want to be healed?’ We can ask ourselves: ‘Do I want to let God’s grace, through the Church, and through the people who surround me, enter my life for a purpose of healing, or am I attached to my wounds?’ If I look honestly at that which has wounded me, I am ready to start learning the art of compassion. Compassion is unsentimental. It is a dynamic that plays out relationally, equipping me to understand that which another person is living through without reducing everything to my own perspective. Compassion is a kind of empathy inviting me to see life as it manifests itself in the reality of someone else. Have we lost this empathy? I think we have, a bit. Let’s consider the way in which we look at migrants, the poor, the victims of war. At the same think I do think that compassion is an impulse deeply rooted in the human heart, even if it may be covered by layers of rocks and sand. We may have excavation work to do in order to rediscover that fount of living water that is the heart’s compassion. How, though, can we manage to stay afloat confronted with so many images of pain from all over the world? We are submerged by images, surrounded on all sides by evidence of pain. It is humanly impossible to invest oneself fully in each of these realities. It would kill us. A certain detachment is needed before this tsunami of information, of images of suffering. Yet it matters not to close our eyes, or our heart, to the suffering other, present in real, incarnate persons. We have to train ourselves to keep our eyes and hearts open and vulnerable in the encounters we have daily, not enclosing ourselves in an interior cell where we try to resist the wounds of the world and of the other. Before so much pain, how can we not feel powerless? We can look at ourselves, at the circumstances of our own lives and ask: ‘What can I do do here, now, in this situation that is providentially entrusted to me? What can I do for my wife, my husband, my children, my neighbour, the people I meet at the shop, in church, at the post office, in the cinema? What can I do for the beggar sitting before my front door?’ This is where the real work begins; this is where we can begin to transform society. Society is transformed, too, by way of politics. What are the characteristics of the Christian politician? Honesty, realism, truth. A Christian politician must not give in to hyper-rhetoric; he or she must have the courage to call things by their names. They also need a clear sense of the common good, and a sense of what society is. It seems to me that in the West, now, we’ve largely lost a sense of society; instead we isolate ourselves in little confraternities made up of people who share our sensibilities and convictions, people who have been formed the way we have. We need to get out of this kind of isolation. A politician should also be capable of compassion. To whom is your book addressed? To write a book is a bit like putting a letter into a sealed bottle, then chucking that bottle into the sea. You don’t know who will pick it up, if anyone. Ultimately, I’d say the book is addressed to all people of good will. It will establish its own trajectory. It will find its own ways to reach appropriate destinations. I’ll observe it from a distance with interest. What fruit do you hope it might bear? Above all the sweet fruit of hope, of courage to live well and fully without being overwhelmed by the pessimistic darkness powerfully clouding contemporary culture. I hope the book might, in a small way, nurture people’s resolve to follow the high ideals of freedom, truth, communion. Communion, society, is born of principles, ideals, shared ideas. It is born no less of simply taking time to do simple things together, like collecting pebbles on a beach, rejoicing in the wonder of them. A scene from near Ålesund.
To Become a ManThe death of Gérard Philipe on 25 November 1959 provoked national grief in France. In a recentish book, Jérôme Garcin revisits the actor’s singular life and death. He contends that Philipe personified the need for catharsis after World War II, embodying the French nation’s best aspirations. But he stood for something more universal, too. Maria Casarès said of him: ‘He was a man seeking avidly, ferociously to become a man’. He knew time was short. In an interview with the journal Arts, he was asked: ‘What thought preoccupies you?’ He answered: ‘The urgency of the things I have to do.’ Then, ‘What amazes you about life?’, to which he responded, ‘Its brevity’. Happily we have both the films in which he acted and many sound recordings that he made — this one, for example: a marvellous reading of Georges Duhamel’s Mozart Told to Children.
St GeorgeThe story of St George was popularised by James of Voragine, a Dominican contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas. It seems extravagant at first, but once we cotton on to James’s style of story-telling, we find his account is far from implausible. ‘It was, however, the symbol of George, what he represented, that made him so well loved throughout the Middle Ages. Quite how he came to be patron saint of England we do not know, but he was honoured here long before the Norman Conquest. It is wonderful, I think, that England has as its patron a native of Cappadocia; in other words, a Turk. The choice shows what mattered to Englishmen of old when they constructed their identity: not ethnic criteria or narrow-minded jingoism rallying round a cricket team, but the generous living out of Christian faith through charity to the poor, help to those in need, and fearless confession in the face of secular might. These values are hardly less relevant today than they were in the third century. And I would say St George compares favourably to many a contemporary role model. If we put him alongside Justin Bieber or the Spice Girls, we may conclude that the medievals weren’t so silly after all.’ From Entering the Twofold Mystery.
Dealing with StuffJim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother ends with a scene in which two twins stand before a garage that is full of the things of their parents, mysteriously deceased. Considering the relics of these two lives and of their own heritage, one asks: ‘What’re we gonna do with all this stuff?’ The other replies: ‘I can’t deal with it.’ So they pull down the garage door, lock it, and walk away, fragmenting, by a cunning camera effect, as they withdraw. The film is made up of three perfectly composed visual short stories that explore the dynamics of unprocessed family tensions. There’s a cynical note to the movie, but it is also fond, at times funny. It’s beautifully realistic, one of those films that absorb you to such an extent that you feel a little lost when you step outside the cinema. We’re shown that the construction of family is ongoing work, at once an ascesis and an art. Deep connections, an interpenetration of colour, remain even in the face of estrangement.
3. Sunday of EasterThis homily was given at a confirmation Mass at Stiklestad. Acts 2.14, 22-23: You have made known to me the path of life. 1 Peter 1.17-21: Through Christ you now have faith in God. Luke 24.13-35: Did not our hearts burn? It is a venerable Catholic tradition to take a confirmation name. Why? Surely we’ve carried a perfectly serviceable name since baptism? That’s true; and in fact our confirmation name doesn’t replace our baptismal name. Rather, we take a confirmation name in addition, as a sign that we’re entering a new stage of life. It may be useful to look briefly at the distinction between these two names. When a baby is born, friends and family immediately want to know what it will be called. Mum and dad look at the adorable creature and ask: ‘Little human being, who are you?’ They try to find a name that fits. Names were long hereditary. One was named after one’s father’s father or mother’s mother. A child was by name the carrier of a lineage. The current tendency is rather for parents to look for unusual names. When I was growing up, this country debated whether one might lawfully make up names for kids, to call them Kichen-Roll or Meadow, stuff like that. Such was the experimentalism of the 70s. We see it expressed still in curious, draughty, often impractical buildings from that time. Well, my point is this: the name given in baptism expresses a heritage, others’ vision for us. That’s a treasure. To be human is to grow out of something. In order to grow we need soil. The soil may be nourishing or sandy, but it is ours, our point of departure. If we want to grow up and become free, it’s vital to learn to say ‘Yes’ to our origins. A confirmation name works differently. We choose it. It stands for what we want to become. We chose a saint’s name. If you ask AI how many saints there are, it’ll estimate 11,000. I think that estimate too small. An immense choice is laid before us. Among the saints we find all sorts: women and men, religious and seculars, scientists and artisans, outgoing people and shy people. What unites them is the fact that in each the mystery of God is perceptibly radiant. The saints have let themselves be formed by faith. They have followed their call coherently. Thereby they have found themselves. A saint is someone who, through friendship with Christ, has become fully authentic. We choose a saint as our model and ally in order that we, too, may become authentic. This, my friends, touches the core of the sacrament you will receive today. It is rightly called confirmation. You confirm assent to the grace received in baptism. You assume responsibility for it. You say ‘Yes’ to your Christian origin, to your first, original name. At the same time you confirm with a ‘Yes’ that you wish to proceed. To be at your stage of life is to stand before vast choices. You ask: ‘What shall I do with my life? What profession will I choose? Will I find someone to love, who will love me as I am? Does God call me to some particular service?’ These questions may make you dizzy, perhaps a little afraid. But there is joy, too, in standing before an open horizon, in the wind, with rucksack and staff, knowing: I’ll be setting the course from now on. I’ll choose the name that, by my other choices, I wish yo live up to. And of course, you do not walk alone. To be confirmed is to say ‘Yes’ to a community. It was when the apostles received the Spirit that the Church emerged. Till then, faith in Jesus had been a private business. The disciples had stuck to themselves, nurturing the memories of all they had learnt, all they had lived through. At Pentecost the doors burst open. The apostles go out into the world with everything they carry within. Our reading from Acts tells us how Peter experienced the day of Pentecost. He speaks of joy in the heart. Joy is a sign of the Spirit’s gift — and I hope that you who are confirmed today will be bearers of joy into an often bleak time. Peter next points towards a hope he carries in the body. We live in body-conscious times. In Trondheim it’s impossible to go anywhere at all without being run over by joggers; there are fitness centres on every corner; there is much nakedness in the media, and constant talk about sex. But who can tell us what the body means? Who can tell us that the body is more than an instrument for hunger and satisfaction, which leads at once to new hunger? The gift of the Spirit lets us know the hope implanted in the body so that we may live hopefully. ‘You have shown me the path of life’, says Peter. Today you, too, affirm: ‘Yes, I want to live, live fully and beautifully!’ Living like that you will be sources of life for others. The Catholic Church is a community of persons hungry for life. In the Church we are nurtured by him who is Life. At Emmaus he let himself be known in the breaking of bread. We can know him that way still, at Mass. It is his, Christ’s, Spirit you now receive. The Spirit comes to you as a friend. To each of you he whispers a new, essential name that God alone knows, a name that expresses your unique calling and task. By learning that name you will find your way to a happy, fruitful existence. Listen carefully, then! That is my heartfelt wish for all of you.
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Saint of the day: St Mark, the Evangelist. One of the four Evangelists, in his life Mark achieved what every Christian is called to do...to proclaim to all people the Good News that is the source of salvation. His is Read More 6 Likes
Today is Earth Day and every April 22nd, stakeholders of all backgrounds come together to advance sustainability and climate action in commemoration of Earth Day. It also provides an opportunity to explore how we can engage with the “Adoption of Read More 15 Likes
Today we remember Pope Francis on the first anniversary of his death. Throughout his ministry he called the Church to be a place of mercy, compassion, and hope for all. His witness of humility and care for the poor touched millions Read More 98 Comments
First Anniversary Yesterday pope Francis In Heaven please god I hope he’s comes A SAINT 🙏🙏🌹.Rest in peace Pope Francis. The people's Pope. 🙏🙏🕯🕯Oggi Felice Memoria... IN PARADISO.
There's a huge céad mile fáilte to one and all as we celebrate our dear Nano Nagle at Nano Nagle Birthplace. Please come along and enjoy this tremendous occasion marking the influence a Killavullen lady had on education and religion for Read More 1 Likes
