Celtic spirituality has long cultivated the belief in so-called “thin places” where the veil separating heaven and earth, time and eternity, is thin and where the experience of the sacred and the divine is heightened. Places of Christian pilgrimage and shrines are among the more commonly recognized “thin places.” Monasteries and their immediate environs are […]

     With a predictable regularity guests at our Retreat House ask me whether we are living in the end times. Although I realize this has been a perennial preoccupation and fear in every era, I am in no position to know. I always repeat what Jesus himself said: only the Father knows.      Even without […]

Increasing numbers of people are avoiding so-called “organized religion” and labeling themselves “spiritual” rather than “religious.” In doing so, they seriously challenge traditional approaches to the divine, in general, and Christ, in particular. In times past this has sometimes been integral to mystical movements within the church in which God’s grace reaching the mystic in […]

Today’s Gospel occupies an interesting place in Luke’s Gospel. It’s preceded by this self-effacing admission of good servants: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we are obliged to do. And it is followed the realization: Behold the Kingdom of God is among you. I believe that this healing of ten lepers both illustrates […]

Masochism is that mental and psychological aberration according to which a person voluntarily seeks out pain and suffering and actually derives pleasure and satisfaction thereby. I mention this because today’s parable of Lazarus speaks of the great chasm separating the place of torment from the peaceful and joyous repose with Abraham. The latter explains that […]