We need a God who doesn’t need us. Our needs are big and simple: from God we need life and we need our mortality to be dealt with. If we have a God who needs us, he will be too weak to satisfy those needs. How could we follow someone who is looking to us for his needs, we who live just until our mortality gets the better of us. No, we need a God who doesn’t need us. The Lord warns us that whatever, whoever is not himself will steal, kill, and destroy us. That doesn’t hav

One of the many perverse events of the French Revolution was its regular public executions, at which crowds would gather to watch and cheer. A famous exception was the execution of the sixteen Carmelite sisters of Compiegne, when the crowd reportedly watched in silence. They seemed to realise that something truly horrific was happening, as they watched the sisters praying, singing, and kissing the statue of Our Lady, before they went up the scaffold to the guillotine. It is n

In these first weeks of Easter we see the paschal candle in all its glory. Taller than it will be as the year goes by, during Eastertide it is lit at all Masses, and until Pentecost it is always placed in a prominent place near the altar or ambo. Go up close to the candle and you will see the sign of the cross either carved into it or painted onto it. You will see the calendar year, and the Greek alpha and the omega, showing that Christ is the beginning and end of all history