Each time we celebrate Mass, and on other occasions when we use formal prayers, we sometimes say words like, "......together with the angels...". Recently I have found myself wondering about those "angels"... I wonder what they are. Are they humanoid creatures with wings that fly around the place? Do they really look like those sad-faced white beings that are often depicted in pious European paintings? And what about Satan and the other "fallen angels"? What are we thinking about when we picture them?

’d like to borrow a very good story from Miguel de Umanumo, a Spanish philosopher and novelist from the 20th century about the origin of hell.

If you are like me, you have probably felt outrage, despair and deep anger reading about the situation in northern Iraq.

The explosive spread of the Ebola virus in several countries of West Africa is alarming health authorities, governments and communities world-wide. 

Jesus has His divine ways to select the members of His cabinet for the Kingdom of God, 

Life in a Parish is changing all the time. People come, stay and move on.

Archbishop John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand is a person I admire when it comes to knowing people personally.

Love is the greatest power in the world. To be possessed with love is to be filled with a power, which will not be denied.

There have been few times in my life where Jesus’ invitation to join Him on the water like Peter, have really taken me by surprise to the point of running away. These were very difficult moments when fear, doubt and confusion would take control of my life at that moment in time.

I still could remember vividly an experience I had in the interior of Ghana, West Africa, where I ministered from 1998 – 2000 amongst the Asante tribal peoples.

If you enter in any Filipino house, the first thing that the owner will ask you, and it is almost like a greeting, is, “Have you eaten?”

At Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand I saw some boys and girls holding some paper and being asked to answer some questions, but in order to do that they have to run and find the answers located in different exhibitions all over the museum.

Several years ago, I was invited to attend an international interfaith conference in Italy.

The ‘Opening Prayer’ for Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time prays ‘show favour, O Lord, to your servants and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace, that, made fervent in hope, faith and charity, we may be ever watchful in keeping your commands’.

I grew up in the tropics of the south pacific in an agrarian society. We are very familiar with working the land, sowing seeds, raising crops and harvesting its produce.

THE early morning sun struck its first shafts of warmth through the panels and bezels of the stained glass wall of St Francis Xavier's Parish church near North Sydney station