The angelic doctor

 

Over the course of the last 10 months and as part of the Bread for the Journey blog series I have drawn on St Thomas Aquinas on many occasions [for example in The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist #1]. The feast of this great saint occurs on 28 January and deserves a short blog in its own right today. Much of our theological thinking has been shaped by his work especially in regards to the Eucharist.

The saint was a 13^th Century Italian Dominican friar, priest, theologian and philosopher.  He is associated with a school of thought often referred to as ‘Thomism’.  A proponent of natural theology, he argued that the existence of God could be known through rational reflection on the created world, drawing on both human reason and insights from Aristotelian philosophy. He also emphasised that faith and reason ultimately complement one another since both have their source in God.

Who will celebrate?: celibacy and the Eucharist

It is well known that the age profile of serving Catholic priests is such that a dwindling and often exhausted clergy are serving multiple churches in administrative areas that might have been served by half a dozen priests 50 years ago.  The arrival of missionary priests from other parts of the globe is helping but nowhere at the scale and pace required to replace priests. Those who have retired have not, in many cases, really retired as they are on call on a regular basis. Things we took for granted in the past such as school chaplains, hospital chaplains and availability of weekday masses are becoming increasingly scarce on the ground.

The question of clerical celibacy has been raised as a possible barrier to recovering priestly vocations. Along the question of women’s ordination which I have explored in earlier blogs this year (Women’s ordination – weighing up the arguments ), these ‘hot button’ issues have been the subject of debate in Ireland and elsewhere. The Synodal process has generated much discussion and many questions, but as yet it remains unclear what practical changes, if any, may emerge regarding these matters. 

Eucharist and the courage to speak the truth

In October 1984 Father (now Blessed) Jerzy Popiełuszko was murdered by State agents of the communist regime in Poland some time between his abduction on 19 October and the discovery of his body on 30 October. His only 'crime' was to preach the Gospel, defend human dignity and speak out against the injustices of the communist regime.  His celebration of Mass in Warsaw drew thousands of people seeking strength and solace in the dark years of oppression.  He constantly preached that Christians must ‘overcome evil with good’ (Romans 12:21) - a phrase that became the motto of his ministry. Fr Jerzy imitated the sacrificial love of Christ in his own life. His readiness to suffer harassment, threats and ultimately death rather than abandon the truth reflects a deep love for Jesus Christ summed up in the celebration of the Eucharist.

The gift of the Eucharist in Luke and Acts

The feast of the evangelist, St Luke, would normally be marked today.  He is believed to have authored the Acts of the Apostles as well as the Gospel that bears his name.  His Gospel is distinctive in its emphasis: care for the poor and outcasts, women, prayer and the Holy Spirit. The parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are unique to this Gospel. In common with two other Gospels (the ‘Synoptics’), we have an account of how the Eucharist was instituted in chapter 22 (14-20):

Religion and politics

Source: Crossings

Sunday 18 October 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Isaiah 45:1-6 Psalm 96 (95) 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5 Matthew 22:15-21

(See also Mark 12:13-17 and Luke 20:20-26)

 

Meditatio:

“When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away” (Matthew 22:22)

Commentary:

Passages of Scripture, especially from the Gospels, that deal with poverty, wealth, taxes or politics are often ‘spiritualised’ or ‘individualised’ in order to avoid controversy. By spiritualising, I mean turning a challenging Gospel encounter into a simple moral tale. By individualising, I mean reducing it to a question of my personal behaviour and private relationship with God.

Of course, personal conversion matters. We are each accountable for our lives before God. Yet the Gospel is never confined to the private sphere. It speaks to relationships, communities, institutions and societies. Nevertheless, we are frequently told that Jesus was not interested in politics and that religion and politics should never meet.

I protest. Let me explain.

What early Christians believed about the Eucharist

St Ignatius of Antioch belonged to the generation of Christians that  emerged towards the end of the first century immediately after the apostles. He was a friend of St Polycarp who, according to tradition, was a disciple of the evangelist, St John. We are very close to the historical person of Jesus and the very first apostles. We should read Ignatius with this context in mind.

As bishop of Antioch, he wrote a number of important letters to Christians in other parts of the very early Christian world.  Some of these were written on his way to martyrdom at the turn of the first century.  He gave clear witness to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist: he referred to the Eucharist as ‘the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ’, and writes of his desire for ‘the bread of God … which is the flesh of Jesus Christ’ and for ‘the drink of God, namely His blood’.  He referred to the Eucharist as the’medicine of immortality’ (Ignatius to the Ephesians 20:2).

Discovering the heart of Jesus in the Eucharist

A few months after King James II and King Wiliam of Orange faced off each other on the banks of the river Boyne in July of 1690, a saintly French nun, St Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), the great apostle of the Sacred Heart, was approaching the end of her earthly pilgrimage. 

For her journey, the Eucharist was the privileged place of encounter with the loving Heart of Christ. It was while she was in prayer before the exposed Blessed Sacrament that she experienced in a special way the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  St Margaret Mary believed that Christ had entrusted her with the mission of spreading devotion to his Sacred Heart throughout the Church. Our Lord also inspired her to promote the practice of the ‘Holy Hour’ -  a period of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in union with Jesus' agony in Gethsemane. This practice remains one of the most important forms of Eucharistic devotion in the Church after the Mass.

The Lord within: St Teresa of Ávila on Holy Communion

By Peter Paul Rubens - Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank

Today is the memorial of the great Carmelite Saint, contemplative and Doctor of the Church, St Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582). In the turbulence of the Protestant Reformation that pulled Europe apart in 16^th Century, Teresa saw a life of prayer, fidelity to the Church and devotion to Christ in the Eucharist as essential to the renewal of the Church. The Eucharist occupies a privileged place within Teresa's broader Christ-centred spirituality and life of what we refer to as mental prayer. Her reform of Carmel stressed:  frequent participation at Mass together with a life ordered towards greater union with Christ. In her great work, The Interior Castle, she describes how the soul journeys toward complete union with God.  In language typical of her writing and speaking, she urged her sisters to receive the Lord in Holy Communion in the following terms:

When you receive the Lord, since you have His Person present, strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul.

A practical guide to Eucharistic Adoration

In which sacrament are the mystery and saving fruits of Christ's Incarnation, earthly ministry, passion, death and resurrection most fully made present and given to us? The answer is the Eucharist..  Writing in the Introduction to the Devout Life, Saint, Doctor and bishop St Francis de Sales (1567-1622) describes  the Mass as the sun of the spiritual exercises – the centre and heart of Christian faith and life.  For him, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a prolongation of our participation in the Eucharist. He writes of participation in the Mass in these words:

Saint Chrysostom says that the Angels crowd around it in adoration, and if we are found together with them, united in one intention, we cannot but be most favourably influenced by such society. Moreover, all the heavenly choirs of the Church triumphant, as well as those of the Church militant, are joined to our Dear Lord in this divine act, so that with Him, in Him, and by Him, they may win the favour of God the Father, and obtain His Mercy for us.

Nature lessons

This morning, prompted by the excellent resource of Aleteia’s daily prayer, I meditated on a short passage from the Book of Job (12:7-10):

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;  ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.  Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?  In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

The phrase that remained with me was verse 10:

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

Earlier in September I reflected on the work of Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and his remarkable piece of work entitled The Mass on the World.  I commented on his ConsistentEucharistic Thread in a number of posts in early September.  The Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, in Francis of Assisi: A Model for Human Liberation (Orbis, 2006), draws on Thomas of Celano’s Second Life to show how St Francis recognised creation as kin.

We are often inclined to grasp, use, dominate and discard the materials of Earth, yet Scripture and Francis invite us to see creatures as God’s work, held in his hand. We share genetic kinship with other creatures, though human beings stand above them in dignity as made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-28; LaudatoSi’ #90).

The theologian Sr Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, in Ask the Beasts (Bloomsbury, 2014), whose title comes from Job 12:7, uses the term ‘deep incarnation’, a phrase coined in 2001 by the Danish Lutheran Niels Henrik Gregersen. Fr Richard Rohr has drawn on her work in one of his recent daily mediations, Creation as kin, She writes:

The flesh that the Word of God became as a particular human being is part of the tree of evolving life on earth, which in turn is part of the vast body of the cosmos….

In John 1:14 (‘the Word became flesh’), God became one of us and, at the same time, in solidarity with the whole created order.  He assumed our nature (Catechismof the Catholic Church 464-469). In John 6:51-58, that same flesh given in the Eucharist unites us to Christ and to one another (CCC #1396). Pope Francis sees the Eucharist as ‘the living centre of the universe’ (Laudato Si’ #236).

If every living thing is held in God’s hand along with the breath of every human being, as Job says, how much more should we value unborn human life? Jesus says we are ‘of more value than many sparrows’ (Mt 10:29-31).  Concern for creation cannot be reconciled with justifying abortion (see also CCC#2270-2274).  In Laudato Si’ #120, the late Pope Francis reminds us that:

Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.

 

The millennial saint

Twenty years ago, this day, a 15-year old Italian boy died of leukaemia.  Born in 1991, St Carlo Acutis had a great love for Jesus in the Eucharist. He enjoyed football, computers, friends, films and ordinary teenage life. Yet he built his life around daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration and prayer.

He used his technical skills to document all known Eucharistic miracles. His devotion to the Eucharist inspired all those around him and enabled him to leave behind a beautiful testimony of his love for the Eucharist: his Eucharistic miracle website.

For Carlo, holiness was not primarily about extraordinary penances or mystical experiences. It was about frequent and loving union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. He saw the Eucharist as the direct route to friendship with Jesus and ultimately to eternal life.

It is only beginning

Sunday 11 October 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Isaiah 25:6-10 Psalm 23 (22) Philippians 4:12-14 Matthew 22:1-14

(See also Luke 14:15-25)

Meditatio:

“For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14)

Commentary:

At first hearing, the parable of the wedding banquet can be unsettling. The king's reaction to those who reject his invitation seems harsh to modern ears. Yet we would be mistaken if we were to read this simply as a story about an angry earthly ruler. Jesus often uses vivid and challenging images to awaken us to the seriousness of God's invitation and the tragedy of refusing it. The focus of the parable is not so much divine vengeance but divine generosity.

The invitation is extraordinary. In the first reading, Isaiah gives us a vision of the Lord preparing ‘a feast of rich food and well-aged wines’ for all peoples. On that holy mountain God promises to destroy death itself and wipe away every tear. The banquet is a sign of salvation, communion and joy. In Psalm 23, the Lord, the Good Shepherd, prepares a table before us and leads us through even the darkest valley. We need not be afraid, for he is with us. The Gospel wedding feast, Isaiah's banquet and the psalmist's table all point towards the same reality: God's desire to share his own life with his people.

Praying with the body at Mass

 

We are, thank God, material as well as spiritual beings.  In praying alone or with others our bodily posture matters. 

The postures and gestures we adopt at Mass are not merely matters of etiquette. They are part of the Church's wisdom, teaching us to pray with our whole body, mind and soul. We stand in reverence, sit in attentive listening and kneel in adoration. Far from being rivals, body and soul are companions in worship. Our outward actions can help to shape our inner disposition and open us more fully to the grace of the Eucharist.

As we gather around the altar, we do not come as isolated individuals but as members of the Body of Christ. By praying, singing, listening, standing, sitting and kneeling together, we express visibly the communion that Christ creates among us. The gestures of the Mass are therefore not simply habits inherited from the past; they are signs of faith in the living Lord who speaks to us in his Word and gives himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament.

Heart speaks unto heart

Some things draw me to Saint John Henry Newman (1801-1890) including the following:

• He journeyed from Anglicanism into full communion with the Catholic Church.
• He served as the founding Rector of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, from which University College Dublin eventually emerged. I completed three degrees, there, between 1977 and 2005.
• He established the beautiful University Church on St Stephen's Green, where I was baptised on 22 December 1956.
• He anticipated many themes later developed at Vatican II, especially concerning the role of the laity, the development of doctrine and the importance of returning to the sources of the early Church.
• He was a loyal son of the Church but not blind to historical context and development of doctrine (although he accepted the doctrine of papal infallibility defined by the First Vatican Council in 1870, he questioned the timing, prudence and formulation of the doctrine).
• His deep personal friendship with Fr Ambrose St John (1814-1875) showed his extraordinary capacity for human friendship.

After the death of his friend in 1875, Newman wrote:

Respect in the House of God

In the Eucharist we share in the divine mysteries in the company of families, communities, the universal church and the choirs of heaven.  It is no small thing.  In between services we are in a very special place which our ancestors called ‘the house of God’ or in the Irish language ‘teach an phobail’ (the house ofthe people). Now, there is a huge difference, in Irish, between ‘teach tábhairne’ ( the local pub) and ‘teach an phobail’. Both venues were, traditionally, the main gathering places for people not least when someone died.  However, the sacred space that is the parish church (or cathedral or abbey church) is a place set apart for community worship and private prayer. 

Making time for thanksgiving

Receiving Holy Communion is a precious moment in our lives.  There was a time when many Catholics received Holy Communion only a few times each year, often most notably during the Easter season. Today, amongst regular Mass-goers, frequent reception is very much the norm.

The whole of the Mass is an act of thanksgiving, which is reflected in the very meaning of the word eucharistia in Greek or 'Eucharist'.  We thank the Lord for coming to us, dying for us and rising again. We thank him for coming to us in Holy Communion.  It is right and fitting to make time to give thanks in personal prayer in the moments following reception. This, also, may take the form of a mindful awareness of the Lord’s presence in us and in those around us.  In practice and notwithstanding the time of silence that may be practiced for a few moments towards the end of the Communion rite before the Communion prayer, the time to the final dismissal is typically short.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal specifically provides for sacred silence after Communion:

When the distribution of Communion is over, if appropriate, the Priest and faithful pray quietly for some time.

Preparing for Holy Communion

 A simple prayer that I recited over many years prior to receiving Holy Communion runs as follows:

I wish my Lord to receive you, with the purity, humility and devotion with which your Most Holy Mother received you, with the spirit and fervour of the saints.

I did not know where it came from.  Recently, I discovered that the prayer dates from the 18th Century but was popularised by St Jose María Escrivá (1902-1975), priest and founder of Opus Dei, whose memorial is celebrated on 26 June.

The Eucharist: inculturation and incarnation

In the month of October we remember in prayer the work of missionaries who bring the good news to peoples far and wide.  Usually we think of priests and religious travelling to far away countries to share the Gospel with those who have not yet heard it. We need not look far to see that we are called to mission here in this place, at this time and in the ordinary works of life.  A saint little known in this part of Europe is St Innocent of Alaska (1797-1879) who travelled vast distances across Alaska and Siberia, learned indigenous languages, translated texts, and established local churches. St Innocent brought the Divine Liturgy to the remote corners of a vast expanse of territory.   He carried the Gospel to people who had never heard it and worked so they could worship God in their own language.

He learned Aleut and other local languages and sought to communicate the Gospel through local cultures rather than simply transplanting Russian customs. This missionary approach reflects the mystery of the Incarnation: God speaks our language in Christ and gives himself in tangible, material signs.

The humble lamb

St Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226), whose Transitus, his passing to eternal life, was commemorated yesterday evening on the 800th anniversary of his death, remains one of the Church's most beloved saints.  St Francis is among the most widely admired saints in Christian history.

In common with other saints of the second millennium, St Francis embraced a strong Eucharistic message.  A much-loved story from the Franciscan tradition tells of a little lamb that would kneel during the elevation at Mass:

During the celebration of the Mass, at the moment of elevation, he would bow down, knees bent, as if it were that this devout little animal wished to reproach men of little faith for their irreverence and encourage devout men for their reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament.

In his Admonitions, Francis writes:

The cornerstone

 

Sunday 4 October 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80 (79) Philippians 4:6-9 Matthew 21:33-43

See, also, Mark 12:1-12 and Luke 20:9-19

Meditatio:

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes” (Matthew 21:42)

Commentary:

Yet another parable from Saint Matthew's Gospel is placed before us: a landowner plants a vineyard, entrusts it to tenants and later comes seeking its fruits. At first glance, we may imagine ourselves in various parts of the story. Perhaps we recognise moments when we have resisted God's voice, or perhaps we are drawn to the image of Christ, the rejected cornerstone upon whom our lives are built.

To understand the parable properly, however, we must remember its biblical and historical setting. 

Joy is the echo of the Eucharist within us

Blessed Columba Marmion (1858–1923) was an Irish Benedictine monk and Abbot of Maredsous in Belgium.  He was an important spiritual writer of the modern Church (some might say the ‘pre-modern’!).  He emphasised that Christ's life is communicated to believers above all through the liturgy and sacraments.

He was born on the northside of Dublin in Queen Street which is now known as North Brunswick Street. Before becoming the renowned Benedictine abbot of Maredsous, Blessed Columba Marmion served as a young curate in Dundrum Parish from 1881 to 1882. There, in the ordinary work of parish ministry and the celebration of the sacraments, the future spiritual master first exercised the priesthood that would later inspire Catholics throughout the world.

An entry in Wikipedia says about Blessed Marmion:

Always at my side

One of the earliest prayers I learned was this:

Angel of God, my guardian dear
To whom God’s love commits me here
Ever this day be at my side
To light and guard, to rule and guide.
Amen

Today, the feast of the Guardian Angels, reminds us that on the journey of life we are not alone.  Many seek wisdom, friendship and protection.  With a mustard seed size of faith we can be sure that an angelic presence assigned to us at the first moment of our existence in the womb accompanies us.  Praying with and to one’s guardian angel is not a substitute for a living, deep and personal relationship with Jesus. Rather, it is a boost, a complementary help.

In the heart of the Church: St Thérèse and the Eucharist

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), Doctor of the Church was a Carmelite nun known to older generations as ‘the Little Flower’.  She had a deep and distinctive relationship with the Eucharist that shaped both her spirituality and her life. She grew up in a loving and devout family but was not spared suffering in childhood. Her mother, St Zélie Martin, died when Thérèse was only four years old, a loss that left a lasting mark on her sensitive nature.

Following several of her sisters into the Carmelite monastery in her hometown of Lisieux, she entered Carmel at the age of fifteen. There she lived a remarkable life of hidden holiness, simplicity and spiritual insight before her death from tuberculosis in 1897 at the age of twenty-four. She never lived to see the twentieth century, yet in many ways she can be regarded as a remarkably modern saint, living at a time of growing scepticism, rapid material progress and increasing pressures on the Church. Her mission, as she eventually discovered, was simply ‘to be love in the heart of the Church’.