Posts by Joe McDonald (Page 2)
Rumblings from the Bunker ! The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY ( RUMBLINGS FROM THE BUNKER – A WORD FROM THE PASTOR ) Do you remember that movie? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One of the great ‘spaghetti westerns’. I love it. I love it for the shooting. The silence. Of course I love Clint Eastwood, and no, I am not forgetting the music. Unforgettable, thanks to Ennio Morricone. I guess we are so used to the title we…
Rumblings from the Bunker
CAN YOU HEAR IT? LISTEN CAREFULLY….Ssh….THERE IT IS AGAIN…CAN YOU HEAR IT? RUMBLINGS FROM THE BUNKER – ( a word from the Pastor ) There’s a bell tolling in the distance. I have heard people say it’s a death knell. It’s a sombre bell which some say is signalling the death of the Church. When this is put to people there’s a great range of reaction from ‘ please God that won’t happen’ to ‘that’s good news –…
Rumblings from the Bunker 8/9/2024
It is perhaps my single greatest disappointment, in my life as a priest. I speak of how many of us miss the fact that we as Christians are called to have a unique personal relationship with Jesus. I appreciate these words are easily spoken and I have regularly encountered people, including people of strong faith, who have difficulty accepting this concept. I have come to the conclusion that this lack of intimacy with Jesus, should be the cause of…
An Invitation not to be Ignored!
It’s amazing how often I meet people who say that the Trinity means nothing to them. They say that it’s too vague, too far away from them. Too complicated. They even say that it has no bearing on their life. It goes further. I have people say to me that their faith life is rooted in Jesus, which of course is marvellous, but then they go on to say that they have no connection with the Trinity. Now whilst I…
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR THE CHURCH ?
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR THE CHURCH? I have been pondering this question for a long time now. Maybe it’s an age thing but I am so tired of the language of crisis. It must be twenty years now that I am listening to talk of the various crises facing the Church with a host of names attached to them including, crisis of faith, crisis of vocations, and crisis of identity. This talk has oftentimes been accompanied with a…
Rumblings from the Bunker; Holy Bread ?
Recently I was a little alarmed to hear someone, whom I thought would know better, display a huge ignorance with what happens at Mass. Of course there are many things that happen at this beautiful and most extraordinary of experiences that we call The Mass or The Eucharist, including sorrow for sin, the communal expression of what we believe in the Creed and a missioning back into the world to spread, and indeed live, the Gospel. However at the core…
A Plethora of Clots and a Myriad of Prayer !
A PLETHORA OF CLOTS AND A MYRIAD OF PRAYER So I have been on a journey, a journey which had its own language. It was the language of hospital, doctors and nurses, of scans and tests and my new key term, the D-dimer! This term is now an important one in my vocabulary. The closest I had got to this, up until a few weeks ago, was one of the treats of my youth, the dime bar! I now…