MERRY CHRISTMAS


 

Hemen A. Emmanuel O.S.A

Colegio Mayor Mendel. C. del Rector Royo-Villanova, 6, Moncloa - Aravaca, 28040 Madrid

Madrid, España.   

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BRENDAN MACDONNELL (O.S.A) GONE HOME IN THE TIME OF WAITING.

Image
  Some years ago, when I was a novice in the Augustinian novitiate, I had the privilege of listening to one of Brendan's homilies. He began by referring to the death of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, whose unforgettable last words were " Noli timere ", which means "Do not be afraid". These words encapsulate a sentiment that Brendan himself would want to convey as we bid him farewell, a reassurance not to be paralysed by grief or fear. Brendan would want us to embrace peace in the face of death, to face its inevitability with acceptance, not shock. The usual religious sentiment of someone “going to a better place” will, no doubt, cross our minds as we move through this moment of loss. Yet Brendan’s outlook extended beyond such platitudes. He embodied an understanding of the Heideggerian assertion that we are "Beings-towards-death" . As the Spanish philosopher Julián Marías reminds us: "If mortality were merely possible, but not necessary, if man wer...
Read more

BLISSFUL IGNORANCE: A PEP-TALK TO AN ARMCHAIR THEOLOGIAN.

Image
                                                                                               https://youtu.be/HTKYsj1Yktg?si=vM8MbX3B-J5R_ecp        " I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him ," [1] as Shakespeare famously wrote. In a reversal of intent, I come not to applaud but to witness folly in its most uninformed form.  I find myself compelled to observe the absurdities of self-assured ignorance. Few things are more maddening than enduring the endless rambling of someone who, with unwavering confidence, stumbles through a jumble of half-formed thoughts, blissfully oblivious to their own confusion. The effect is not merely mentally draining; by the end of it, one is left with the disconcerting feeling that th...
Read more

IS GOD IN NOTRE-DAME’S REBIRTH?

Image
       For the first time since a catastrophic blaze almost reduced it to ruin in 2019, the towering Gothic masterpiece that is Notre-Dame has reopened for worship, resplendent and renewed. Beneath its soaring arches, voices rose in song and prayer, celebrating a rebirth that seemed almost miraculous in its splendour. With three resounding knocks on its doors, Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich, wielding a specially designed crosier carved from fire-scorched beams, ceremonially called the monument back to life on Saturday evening.         French President Emmanuel Macron declared that Notre-Dame would be "even more beautiful than before." Whether Macron views the rebirth  as more glorious than before to silence his critics or as a form of liturgy symbolising a transition from the old to the new, one thing remains certain: his declaration operates within the realm of language steeped in visual and spatial rhetoric. Roland Barthes might rem...
Read more