St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) invites us to consider four degrees of love: The love of self for the sake of self.The love of God for the sake of self.The love of God for the sake of God.The love of self for the sake of God. We may illustrate these from the parable of the […]
To live fully, love wastefully and to be all that God intends me to be. John Shelby Spong ________________________________________________ Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love.Iris Murdoch _____________________________________________ ___________________________________________ Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart […]
Love is the pain of waking from illusion Monica Furlong Love is God’s life code; it is what instructs and informs life.Carlo Maria Martini To see things as they really are. To see someone as she really is. Simone Weil suggests that “love sees what is invisible”. ______________________________________________________________ Who or what don’t you see? To […]
And did you get whatYou wanted from this life, even so?I did.And what did you want?To call myself beloved, to feel myselfbeloved on earth. Raymond Carver ___________________________________________ Imagine you were an oyster. The public would see you as an infrangible nut, a kind of sea-raid shelter, but you would see yourself as all mother-of pearl […]
The way of compassion is truly beyond seeing love as a duty, an attitude we “should” have, but simply and radically a new way of being in the world, a new way of (freely) relating. The conversion that is called for is an awakening to our true self, our true home. Such a conversion is […]
How small a love of Godthat becomes sated in himnot hungrier. Dorothee Soelle _____________________________________________________ The whole story of creation, incarnation and our incorporation into Christ’s body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God’s giving that God’s self makes in the life of […]
This post is the first in Fr Philip’s reflections on Love, part of the series Faith, Hope and Love. The reflections on Love will be accompanied by images of the work of contemporary sculptors and architects who strive to express something of the mystery of this word ‘love’. Know it well, love was his meaning. […]
___________________________________________ If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.Matthew 16:24,25 ______________________________________________ Following Jesus means embracing the reality of our existence and […]
_____________________________________________________ So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.John 13:14 _______________________________________________ To hear Jesus speak was to feel clean. His word was welcoming and inviting, spoken in freedom and appealing to the freedom and dignity of the hearer. And to let him wash our […]
We continue the journey through Holy Week. This week we will complete the series on the words of Jesus, with a reflection for Tenebrae, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. _________________________________________________ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if […]