In order to realise the importance of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist one could appeal to the rather in depth theology of the Church. However the full power of what we celebrate at the altars in our Churches comes from the experience of the saints and those holy men and women who realised the true mystery and power of Christ’s abiding presence in his Body and Blood. One of these holy ones was Cardinal Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, the heroic former archbish

Believing in God is a risky affair. Pick the wrong God, and it's over. Israel alone enjoys the certainty of revelation: the true God made himself known to them. We know that many of our Old Testament heroes and heroines spoke with God. Moses, for example, saw the Burning Bush and was given the tablets of God’s perfect law. This revelation by God gives us far superior knowledge of him than we can arrive at by ourselves. When it comes to believing in God, we take up what

You may have seen a movie in which a woman is in childbirth. Not much is shown, but we hear things: the mother groaning and gasping in labour, midwives offering encouragement, sounds of bystanders anxious, worried, apprehensive. And then there is one sound that resolves all the tension and brings it to a happy ending: the cry of the newborn baby. If the baby is crying, then the baby is breathing, and has thus made the absolutely essential first step to adjusting to life ou