Collected here are articles and reviews that have appeared in print, as well as a presentation of my books. There are a few interviews and some sound material, notably my reading of the Gospels in Greek, a project that remains work in progress.
There is a stage at which speech is still potential - a thought has been articulated, the words lie ready on our tongue, but as yet they exist only in our mind. At that moment we exercise sovereign freedom to choose whether to speak or whether to keep silent.
Continue reading If the fear of God is not anxiety but 'an existential consciousness of reverence', how do you explain this to someone who has only ever understood fear in terms of punishment or dread?
Continue reading The pope has a wonderful and joyful mission, to proclaim Christ to the world! But the head we await will be crowned with thorns in a variety of ways.
Continue reading The Christian proposition is founded on the claim that an Eternal Word, the metaphysical and intentional source of all there is, engages with the world and speaks to it for its flourishing’s sake; and that this Word, at a given point in time, entered history to renew human nature from within, repairing malfunction, so to speak, by re-installing the operating system.
Continue reading Things do not always get sorted out; illness is not always healed; sometimes fractured relationships cannot be mended. To trust God is not to assume that I will be alright - it is to know that, whatever happens, sense may emerge from senselessness, redemptive purity from destructive contamination.
Continue reading Pope Francis spent his life proclaiming the historical, ethical, and metaphysical impact of the resurrection. He taught us to see, and interpret, life's circumstances in the light of Christ's victory over death - this we will faithfully do.
Continue reading Letting ourselves be taken by the hand by the Church, our Mother, we shall appreciate the Marian dimension of our faith, not just as 'devotion', but as the atmosphere within which we live and move and have our being, where, with Mary, Christ's Mother and ours, we learn to own and express our deepest grief and our most exultant joy, carried by a well-founded hope that is at once intelligent and visceral.
Continue reading If I set out to correct, or worse, to condemn, another on the basis of bitterness, anger, or revulsion, my words, however tinged with glacial piety, will bring no blessing; no, they are likely to do harm, perhaps even to induce despair, causing little ones to sin while readying my own stiff neck, the support of my conceited head, for the millstone.
Continue reading We may have known times when an action or a word of ours has ruined something precious; when that which, a moment ago, was integral and dear lies at our feet in pieces, mud-splattered - at such times the voice of God resounds in our inner ear, ‘Adam, where are you?’ And we have no answer.
Continue reading Despair tends to issue from ambivalence, situations in which we feel overwhelmed by confused pain, unable to enact a response. What we can articulate, we can learn to deal with.
Continue reading My little peanut heart starts growing as it becomes more and more able to assume into itself the reality of other lives. It starts growing, step by little step, towards the dimensions of God's heart, which is a heart without any limitations at all.
Continue reading We discover what is in our heart when, notwithstanding the manicured elegance we like to project, someone steps on that toenail, whether by accident or design. Such discovery is pretty unpleasant, but useful.
Continue reading I get quickly bored by attempts to just condemn the contemporary world, or to proclaim that it's gone off the rails. If we as Christians could only look out on the world with a bit more love, and I don't mean a feeling of lovey-dovey love, I don't mean being emotional or endlessly affirming, but looking out on the world and seeing it as a world that merits to be saved by grace.
Continue reading What has the monastic tradition taught us about being human? Is contemplation in competition with rational enquiry?
Continue reading Whether our lot today is struggle or rest is not all that important. What matters is to let God act as he sees fit and not to miss his visitation because, instead of being peacefully present in our cell, our tent of meeting, we are out and about, driving downtown distributing questionnaires on the spiritual life to passers-by.
Continue reading If I am very good at something, and recognised by others as being good, I am tempted to define myself in terms of this gift. The gift is a blessing; but once I display it as a possession in search of admiration or power it may exercise corrupting influence - it takes purity of heart to negotiate great talent.
Continue reading Our wounds will finally heal when they have become so one with Christ’s, so fully surrendered, that we no longer know where his passion ends and ours begins.
Continue reading After a brief period of enjoying a sense of peace, the rumbling within begins. We realise what masses of noisy junk we carry, what unresolved tensions born of anger, jealousy, desire, anxiety, greed, all those movements of the heart the Fathers referred to as ‘passions’.
Continue reading Let us beware of coveting our neighbour’s call. Let us instead wholeheartedly consider, embrace, and be faithful to our own.
Continue reading Within the mystery of the Church, we dare to believe that a Christian life truly given may, by God’ s providence, be an effective balm on the wounds of the poor of our world, who are given us to carry and nurture.
Continue reading In the Book of Daniel, the prophet is referred to as vir desideriorum, a man of desires. This image has always represented the archetype of the monk; it is not less the archetype of the apostles, and of every Christian.
Continue reading The Fathers never forgot that the finality of human life is participation in God’s loving nature. That is why their words, even when they are stern, are light, and full of light.
Continue reading The test of Christian authenticity is always relational. Rid yourself of the habit of judging others, therefore, for who are you to know what moves them or the change of which they are capable?
Continue reading Don Luigi Giussani, a priest of Milan, was one of the twentieth century's great teachers and preachers of Catholic faith, ever clear in his allegiance to the Church, ever committed to making Catholic doctrine comprehensible, applying it with originality and passion to the predicaments, hopes, and anxieties of our times.
Continue reading The Fathers would all have felt deeply offended, had it been suggested to them that they were saying something original. Their concern was to point towards Christ, to be roadsigns, which, when we travel, we acknowledge gratefully but then pass beyond, our eyes set on our destination.
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