Back in Advent I presided at at the Catholic Community's Sunday Mass at the University of Guelph. It afforded an opportunity to speak about the importance of John the Baptist, not only for the season of Advent....
Back in Advent I presided at at the Catholic Community's Sunday Mass at the University of Guelph. It afforded an opportunity to speak about the importance of John the Baptist, not only for the season of Advent....
In 2003, Peter-Anthony Togni was commissioned by Lydia Adams and the Elmer Iseler singers to create an arrangement for their Christmas recording on CBC Records: Puer natus in Bethlehem! (MVCD 1165). He chose to arrange the Gregorian chant "Corde natus", usually translated as "Of the Father's love begotten." In his final item in this Advent series, Kevin Burns speaks with Peter-Anthony Togni about his life and work as a composer and a musician, and about this composition in particular....
An English Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was not widely known as a poet until after he died; his collected poems were first published in 1918 at the instigation of his friend Robert Bridges, who was at the time the Poet Laureate of England. Hopkins was both an observant lover of natural beauty and a deeply faithful man who suffered from depression, themes that reoccur in many of his poems. As a poet, he was also an experimenter, relying on alliteration, innovative meter, and created words, as well as on traditional forms such as the sonnet. As far as we know, this was his only poem about Christmas....
My favourite rock band is the Irish group U2. And one of my favourite songs is U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. It's the second track from U2's 1987 album The Joshua Tree....
On December 14, the Church celebrates St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest mystics in the history of Christianity. He lived in the sixteenth century and received part of his education from the Jesuits. He and St. Teresa of Avila founded the Discalced Carmelites. His search for the most austere and rigorous form of Carmelite life meant that he often had difficulty with superiors, so much so that he was imprisoned in a narrow, stifling cell for more than nine months. Despite his sufferings, he received tremendous consolations....
I teetered on the slender branch of a deciduous tree. One hand was grabbing the trunk and the other trembling towards a plug. My job was to connect plugs of two different strands of coloured lights, light the tree, and make it look nice for Christmas. It was my job both Christmases, I think, because I am the only one in the house young and fit enough to climb a tree. Once I climbed the woody mammoth resignedly, I found myself divided about the task. One part of me was sure that I would fall to the ground with a massive thud, and another part of me wanted to take the risk of moving precariously closer to the plug, which was hanging on another branch overhead and needed connecting....
This Advent, Kevin Burns will listen to some carefully chosen music. In the third in the series he looks at a time when the Jesuits took note of some musical conventions in Canada's First Nations....
I found myself dancing at a Rexall drugstore today. It was somewhere between the condoms and the pain killers, I think. The strangest of places, I must admit, but there you go, the grace of God knows no bounds....
n the last weeks of the Liturgical year and the first weeks of advent the emphasis is on the last things and the final coming of Jesus Christ. Parables exhort us to stay awake, keep vigilant, be patient and persevering. These attitudes and virtues are the very ones a hunter needs to be successful....
