For me it wasn’t a happy return from my recent holiday. I pulled a muscle in my back as I laid foot on my doorstep while shifting my suitcase. Then I learned that during my absence a number of parishioners had suddenly become seriously ill, and that one had passed away… So, you see, it really wasn’t a happy return.…
-
-
It was 30 years ago, in a country openly hostile to Christianity. The Catholic Church was heavily restricted in Her mission. As a young man, I asked a certain priest to help me buy a Bible. This was a rather challenging task in the reality of the time and place. A week or so later he called me to meet…
-
Walking into a furnace; that’s how I felt the very moment I left the air-conditioned airport terminal in Berlin after having flown there from Scotland. Instantly I had to take off my fleece I’d donned all the way from Aberdeen. At that moment I couldn’t possibly know it was the foretaste of what would I experience virtually daily for the…
-
The Great Wall of China. Hadrian’s Wall. The Berlin Wall. The Iron Curtain. The Korean Demarcation Line. The Israel-Gaza barrier. These are just a few examples of physical barriers people have put up to separate themselves effectively from others. I believe there’s another one planned along the Mexican-American border. When such a massive construction effort is undertaken, it’s usually driven…
-
It’s the year 2018. We are sitting in a Catholic Church, attending Mass celebrated in the Roman rite but in our native language. Some of us were cradle Catholics and inherited the Catholic faith from their parents, while others converted Catholic at a later stage in their lives. But it can safely be said that none of us here is…