A Catholic Monthly Magazine

A Brief History of Holy Week (0)

Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life. S.D. Gordon

Without the resurrection, Christianity would be so much wishful thinking, taking its place alongside all other human philosophy and religious speculation. John MacArthur

We cannot give up in the face of evil.… More

Year of the Family (0)

The Solemnity of St Joseph in 2021 marks five years since the publication of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation* Amoris Laetitiae (The Joy of Love). The exhortation spoke of the joy and beauty of love in the family.

Pope Francis will inaugurate the Year ‘Amoris Laetitiae Family’ on St Joseph’s Solemnity this month, 19 March.… More

With a Father’s Heart (0)

An extract from the Pope’s message for The Year of St Joseph

… that is how Joseph loved Jesus, whom all four Gospels refer to as “the son of Joseph” (Luke 4:22; John 6:42; cf. Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3).

After Mary, the Mother of God, no saint is mentioned more frequently in the papal magisterium than Joseph, her spouse.… More

Can You Bear It? (0)

An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew and swallow two centimetres of the leather every day.… More

Re-creating the Hermitage (0)

May, 2006:  Brother Sean Sammon, Superior-General of the Marist Brothers, smiled across the table. “So there you have it, Monsieur Johan. We want you to be the architect to restore the Hermitage, our first Mother House. And not only to restore it, but to breathe new life into it.… More

Marie Françoise Perroton (0)

Part 1 of 2

175 years after Marie Françoise Perroton set out from France to be a missionary in the Pacific, the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary are celebrating this pioneer who started something which became so much greater than herself.… More


MM 50 Years Ago (0)

NZ missionary builds up new Suva parish

The new parish at Laucala Bay ... incorporates the new University of the South Pacific. It also includes a primary school run by the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, the Cathedral Boys’ Secondary School, Corpus Christi Teacher Training College, as well as the Suva Grammar primary and secondary schools.… More

Judgements, Bogans and Losers –
the Challenge (0)

In responding to the circumstances of every day, we need to make judgements. We decide what to eat, what to wear, how to travel, how to spend our time, how to respond to various people or circumstances. Such judgements involve skills we’ve developed and serve us well.… More

The Lady’s Slipper (0)

How was Mary, the Mother of God dressed? At her marriage to Saint Joseph, it is likely that she was dressed elegantly in a long, blue linen dress with sleeves and an underdress of fine silk, as Jewish maidens were. She did not go barefoot, although some of the apparitions might suggest this.… More

The Pulse Prayer (0)

Once, during a retreat, a person I was accompanying plonked himself in the chair opposite me and exclaimed, with some degree of frustration, “I can’t pray!”

“Do you want to pray?” I asked. “Of course,” he replied.

“Do you know why you want to?”… More

Pope Francis and the Pandemic (0)

This issue’s cover shows Jesus alone in his agony in the garden. It is a striking image of the Lord’s pain and sorrow, and also a stark symbol of the agony, pain and sorrow of each and every one of us.… More

The God Nobody Seemed To Want (Comments Off)

The Messiah was predicted and longed for among the Jewish people but when God actually came among us, the light was so different from what was expected, that in our shallow human perceptions it appeared that Christ was the God that nobody seemed to want.… More

The Gift of a Child (Comments Off)

In the chapel of the Retreat House at Manresa in Dublin there is a beautiful sculpture of the Madonna and Child. Mary is clasping the infant to her shoulder in a gentle embrace. As my Director pointed out, it is very unusual for the Child to be facing His mother, rather than looking out at us.… More

March Saints (0)

Blessed Celestina of the Mother of God
(1848-1925)

Marianna Donati was born in Florence. At the age of 13 she made her first Holy Communion and felt the first stirrings of a religious vocation. After spending some inconclusive time with the Vallombrosane sisters, she returned to her family and entrusted herself to the guidance of a Piarist priest, Father Celestino Zini.… More

Something Old – Something New (0)

A Possible Marist Integral Ecology 

Part 1

The first of three Circles:

‘walking humbly with God’

We see and understand ourselves today in a vastly different context to the way in which Jesus’ listeners saw and understood themselves. For them, they were the highpoint and centre of creation, in a stable world, built+ on pillars, with the vault above.… More

The Interior Castle of
 St Teresa of Jesus of Ávila (0)

Part 4 of 7

St Teresa begins this treatment by asking “the Holy Spirit to speak for me.” The Fourth Mansion is concerned for the first time with the truly supernatural, beyond the natural. It is not about our work in prayer, which has been the focus in the first three Mansions.… More