De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Fr. Robert Barron’s Catholicism Project: Lesson 8 – A Vast Company of Witnesses Tonight at Our Lady of Lourdes School, the Parish of Our Lady of Lourdes & St. Joseph, Leigh-on-Sea will be presenting the 8th Session of Fr. Robert Barron's excellent and epic Catholicism Project . This fantastic series of documentaries attempt to redress the modern situation that we encounter of other people telling the Catholic story, and telling it wrong! Instead, we need to tell our own story, we need to re-invigorate ourselves with all the beauty, colour and texture of our incredible faith. This series sets out to do that, it is our story told by us. This week, we are looking at the Vast Company of Witnesses~ The body of Saints which constitute an extraordinary and indefatigable proof of the Catholic faith for many people. This is an overview of the session: I. St. Katharine Drexel  A. Birth, childhood, family: devout Catholic B. As a teenager, developed a detailed program for ...

"The Eucharist "is the great school in which we learn to see the face of God, we enter into an intimate relationship with Him, and we learn at the same time to turn our gaze towards the final moment of history, when He will satisfy us with the light of his face." ~Pope Benedict XVI, Jan. 16, 2013, General Audience ~ This week (Wednesday 16th February) at Our Lady of Lourdes School, the Parish of Our Lady of Lourdes & St. Joseph, Leigh-on-Sea will be presenting the 7th Session of Fr. Robert Barron's excellent and epic Catholicism Project . This fantastic series of documentaries attempt to redress the modern situation that we encounter of other people telling the Catholic story, and telling it wrong! Instead, we need to tell our own story, we need to re-invigorate ourselves with all the beauty, colour and texture of our incredible faith. This series sets out to do that, it is our story told by us. This week, we are looking at the The Church's Sacrament a...

Fr. Kevin Hale in reflective mood with Fr. Graham Smith at the Sea of Galilee in November 2010. "The priest, according to the magnificent definition given by St. Paul is indeed a man  Ex hominibus assumptus , "taken from amongst men,"   yet pro hominibus constituitur in his quae sunt ad Deum , "ordained for men in the things that appertain to God": his office is not for human things, and things that pass away, however lofty and valuable these may seem; but for things divine and enduring. These eternal things may, perhaps, through ignorance, be scorned and contemned, or even attacked with diabolical fury and malice, as sad experience has often proved, and proves even today; but they always continue to hold the first place in the aspirations, individual and social, of humanity, because the human heart feels irresistibly it is made for God and is restless till it rests in Him."                         ...

Welcome to this, the twenty-sixth of my reflections on the theology of the Sunday readings at Mass. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I sincerely hope that this reflection will inspire you. You might find that it answers a few questions you may have, but most of all I hope that it will show you how fantastic Sacred Scripture is and perhaps enable you to share some of my love and passion for the Bible as you begin to comprehend how layered and multi-faceted it is, and what a carefully considered part of the Mass the readings are. If you want to know how these posts came about, please read my first post in this series  here . I would like to think this regular blog would be a great help to anyone who reads at Mass, to enable them to foster a deeper understanding of the message they are trying to impart to the congregation. There are several different ways to read this post. I would suggest the first thing to do is to look at the relevant...

The Rylands Papyrus also known as the St. John's fragment,  is perhaps the earliest New Testament fragment; dated from its handwriting to about 125 . The Gospel According to St. John  terms itself a Gospel. It is a proclamation of the Good News of Salvation (Jn 20:31). It starts like the others, with John the Baptist’s preaching and recounts miracles and teaching from the life of Jesus, His Passion, the empty tomb, and the Apostolic mission. Indeed, it retains the structure and the key points if the Christian  kerygma . This means, according to Fuller, that it belongs to the traditional teaching of the ancient Church (see: Fuller, R., et al,  A New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture  (Nelson, USA, 1975), p. 1022). However, John’s Gospel stands alone for numerous reasons. According to Brown, it contains a Jesus conscious of having pre-existed with God the Father prior to His Incarnation (17:5); a public ministry which concentrates on Jeru...