Fr Ronald Rolheiser, Author at Catholic Herald

Fr Ronald Rolheiser

August 03, 2017

Something inside us despises the ordinary. Something there is that tells us that ordinary life, with its predictable routines, domestic rhythms, and conscription to duty makes for cheap meaning. Inside us there is the sense that the ordinary can weigh us down, swallow us up, and anchor us outside the more rewarding waters of passion,

Angels and the city

July 27, 2017

Several years ago Hollywood made a movie, City of Angels, about an angel named Seth whose job it was to accompany the spirits of the recently deceased to the afterlife. On one such mission, waiting in a hospital, he fell in love with a brilliant young woman surgeon. As an angel, Seth has never experienced

The challenge to enjoy our lives

July 20, 2017

Joy is an infallible indication of God’s presence, just as the cross is an infallible indication of Christian discipleship. What a paradox! And Jesus is to blame. When we look at the Gospels we see that Jesus shocked his contemporaries in seemingly opposite ways. On the one hand, they saw in him a capacity to

Understanding grace more deeply

July 13, 2017

The mark of genuine contrition is not a sense of guilt, but a sense of sorrow, of regret for having taken a wrong turn; just as the mark of living in grace is not a sense of our own worth but a sense of being accepted and loved despite our unworthiness. We are spiritually healthy

Inchoate desire

July 06, 2017

Sometimes while praying the Psalms, I’m caught looking quite uncomfortably into a mirror reflecting back to me my own seeming dishonesty. For example, we pray these words in the Psalms: “My soul longs for you in the night. … Like a deer that yearns for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you my God.

The last word: To whom can we go?

June 29, 2017

‘To whom else shall we go? You have the message of eternal life.” Peter says these words to Jesus. But they are spoken in a very conflicted context: Jesus had just said something that upset and offended his audience, and the Gospels tell us that everyone walked away grumbling that what Jesus was teaching was

Being good-hearted is not enough

June 22, 2017

Charity is about being good-hearted, but justice is about something more. Individual sympathy is good and virtuous, but it doesn’t necessarily change the social, economic and political structures that unfairly victimise some people and unduly privilege others. We need to be fair and good of heart, but we also need to have fair and good

Christianity and noon-day fatigue

June 15, 2017

There’s a popular notion which suggests that it can be helpful to compare every century of Christianity’s existence to one year of life. That would make Christianity 21 years old, a young 21, grown up enough to exhibit a basic maturity but still far from a finished product. How insightful is this notion? That’s a

The seamless garment

June 08, 2017

John of the Cross teaches that within spirituality and morality there are no exempt areas. Simply put, you cannot be a saint or a highly moral person if you allow yourself a moral exemption or two. Thus, I may not allow myself to split off one moral flaw or sinful habit and see it as

Going on ahead, preparing the way

June 01, 2017

‘I go on ahead to prepare a place for you!” Jesus speaks these words to his disciples on the eve of his death as he sits at table with them and senses their sadness as they grapple with his dying, his going away. His words are meant to console them and give them the assurance

When does faith disappear?

May 25, 2017

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead” he added a question: “What kind of a sponge does it take to wipe away a whole horizon?” I often ask that question because just in my own lifetime there has been an unprecedented decline in the number of people who go to church regularly and, more

From storybooks to spirituality

May 18, 2017

My first love was literature – novels and poetry. As a child, I loved storybooks, mysteries and adventures. In grade school, I was made to memorise poetry and loved the exercise. High school introduced me to more serious literature: Shakespeare, Kipling, Keats, Wordsworth, Browning. On the side, I still read storybooks, cowboy tales from the

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