Philippines
friendship’s sake

friendship’s sake

I have spent the weekend in the Philippines (Manila and Cebu) and today head home to NZ. The brief visit was an opportunity to meet with friends in both cities and to...

Filipino evangelists

Filipino evangelists

In the parish of the Good Shepherd, Hurunui, a significant number of our parishioners have arrived here in recent years from the Philippines. Their presence is a great...

present reality

present reality

Our gathering for the Spiritual Exercises continues today after a full Friday evening and Saturday. Late in April more than 25.000 people met in Rimini (on the Adriatic...

NZ speaks in Rome

NZ speaks in Rome

I picked up a copy of the Vatican Newspaper yesterday and was not surprised to see an interview with Cardinal John Dew. Pope Francis is attracted to peripheries and New...

a Saturday…

a Saturday…

The Catholic communities of the Hurunui district are small and spread around a large rural hinterland. Since my arrival in the parish just over three years ago the...

Filipino farewell

Filipino farewell

Yesterday the Philippines farewelled Pope Francis after three remarkable days of friendship. It is worth searching the visit online for some of the video clips and...

loss & hope

loss & hope

When I passed St. Joseph's Papanui yesterday morning there was very little remaining of the church building, just the doors through which so many have passed seeking...

Filipino faith

Filipino faith

Pope Francis is in the Philippines today and over the past couple of hours he has been celebrating the first Mass of his three-day visit in the Cathedral Basilica of...

pressing on

pressing on

Late last week I arrived in the Philippines for a series of retreats / spiritual exercises with communities in General Santos, Manila and Cebu. Yesterday I completed...

Philippines – light a candle

Philippines – light a candle

In the last few minutes news reports have estimated that the death toll in yesterday's Philippines Typhoon is in the vicinity of 10.000 people.   A number of readers of...

Latest Posts

the teenagers

the teenagers

A few years ago I discovered the wonderful way that God uses my imagination in my prayer.
Such openness to imagination when seeking God does not take us away from reality into fantasy but instead brings me into what is most real and inescapably personal and intimate.

Annunciation

Annunciation

A couple of thousand years ago, a young Jewish woman was going about her normal morning routines, perhaps with a mixture of house and garden work, chatting with parents and neighbours, aware of the local drought, the sickness of a neighbour and annoyed by the neighbourhood’s lack of sleep caused by the Romans’ noisy party the night before, when God broke into her routine and entered her life in a new and powerful way.

the real centre

the real centre

Over the last month I have had the opportunity to work with many people across Aotearoa and further afield. In every retreat and seminar I have been with committed and faith-filled people who often feel as though they are on the periphery of the Church

the adventure

the adventure

It’s easy to make the mistake of seeing life as a treadmill, day after day ups and downs, a movement through time from youth to old age, then death and beyond.
Too often if feels as if we are helplessly captive carried along by the momentum of all that is expected of us and demanded from us, and we risk falling into an existence mode, a daily rhythm of survival, enduring, coping and so the treadmill rolls on.

the bigger picture

the bigger picture

Over the years, and even in recent months, weeks and days, I’ve prayed many prayers which have not been answered as I had hoped.
You’ve probably had the same experience: praying and wondering if and when or how your prayer will be answered.