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Keywords: Saint

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Elegy for Peter Porter

    • John Kinsella
    • 05 June 2024

    An elegy doesn’t need to be written straight after a death... and maybe one’s own death catches up before the obituary we write is published. It might be something like re-arranging modernism into structurally sound lines, or discussing the context of metaphors in poems about London and friendship.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hidrellez: The green saint who straddles faiths and cultures

    • William Gourlay
    • 11 May 2023
    2 Comments

    The celebration of Hıdrellez in Turkey unites secular, urbanized communities to honor the arrival of spring on 6 May. Marked by rituals rooted in diverse traditions, the mythical figure of Hıdrellez blends Islamic and Old Testament influences fusing cultures, religions, and customs in yearly observance.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An unlikely friendship: The letters of Wendy Beckett and Robert Ellsberg

    • Philip Harvey
    • 02 December 2022
    3 Comments

    Wendy Beckett and Orbis Books publisher Robert Ellsberg exchanged letters on a near daily basis during the last three years of Sister Wendy’s life. What began as a correspondence on saints evolved into a joyful and intimate exchange about the nature of love, suffering and the need for daily grace.

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  • RELIGION

    The makings of a saint

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 January 2022
    6 Comments

    On the fifteenth anniversary of Rutilio Grande’s death, I went to a memorial celebration in Aguilares. This crossroads town was the centre of the Jesuit local mission of which Grande had been part. I had already been struck by the affection with which everyone spoke of Rutilio Grande. In a society where any ministry to people who were poor exposed one to constant danger, it was natural to become hardened in order to survive. Rutilio Grande, however, was remembered and treasured for his vulnerability.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An incarnation of chiaroscuro

    • Ian C Smith
    • 13 April 2021
    3 Comments

    I flip his collar, air chill, damp, my quick fists burrowing into jacket pockets. I long for an angel with Edie’s face, convent-innocent, unlike mine, who might understand, even share, my boyish dream of making the big time.

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  • RELIGION

    St Francis Xavier, disability, and examining our limits

    • Justin Glyn
    • 02 December 2020
    10 Comments

    3 December has a couple of interesting resonances for this blind Jesuit. It is the feast day of St Francis Xavier — Jesuit missionary extraordinaire. It is also the International Day of Persons with a Disability. It seems to me that the two anniversaries have more than a little in common — both in what they tell us about the limits and the promise of human life in the image of God.

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  • RELIGION

    Wash Day at Le Carmel, Lisieux, circa 1895

    • Rita Tognini
    • 28 January 2020
    5 Comments

    It's definitely the flesh and blood you, Thérèse, not the Little Flower of church statues and holy pictures, milky with sanctity. It's the frank-faced-child-in-lace-trimmed-dress-and-sturdy-boots you. It's the fourteen year old, hair-atop-head-in-a-bun-to-look-older-for-the-Bishop-so-he'll-let-you-take-the-veil you.

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  • RELIGION

    The good words of John Henry Newman

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 October 2019
    16 Comments

    Of English saints the newly canonised John Henry Newman is the most intellectual and active in public life since Thomas More. When conversation turns to faith it is common to regard the gift of finding good words as no more than a decoration on the hard reasoning that faith demands. Newman stands as a reproach to that view.

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  • RELIGION

    The two Francises model climate justice

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 September 2019
    12 Comments

    Pope Francis has insisted that the urgent need to care for the natural world of which we are part is not a disputed question but a Christian duty. He has appealed to the legacy of St Francis of Assisi, whose name he took when he became Pope; that saint of the 13th century who is popularly known best for his love of nature.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    St Augustine's parable of the deer

    • Ted Witham and Eric D. Nelson
    • 29 April 2019
    3 Comments

    'Another thing you should note about the deer,' Augustine gestures to the crowd. 'They cross a stream in single file. One deer lays its head on the back of its forerunner, and the leader changes place often. In these ways they carry one another's load and show us how to bear burdens of our sisters and brothers.'

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  • RELIGION

    The saint and the sultan's model for peace

    • Barry Gittins
    • 14 December 2018
    9 Comments

    Next year will mark the 800th anniversary of the future Saint Francis of Assisi's historic meeting with Malik-al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, during the Fifth Crusade. As we hear or sing seasonal songs of peace and harmony, there are some lessons we can learn from that quirky piece of history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Walking the river valley

    • Grant Fraser
    • 27 August 2018
    2 Comments

    Higher up, with head down in devotion, a kookaburra was beaked out for small murders; with the azure armorial flashed on his wing, he was a rakish monk on his saintly wire; in his taut patience, he was always able to laugh off his murders at the end of the day.

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