Tomorrow’s feast of St John of the Cross (1542-1591) turns our attention to one of the greatest masters and teachers of prayer in the history of the Church. His writings about the topic have depth and beauty but also a simplicity that ensures that his insights are accessible to us who try to pray and to pray better. There is so much of St John’s teaching on prayer that we could highlight. Here I would like to focus on one profound but simple insight that is found in his masterpiece Spiritual Canticle. The message of what John teaches here is about intercessory prayer and how to interpret our human needs or lacks – not as inconveniences but as opportunities for prayer and deeper trust in the God of love. Bear in mind that John wrote his Spiritual Canticlein the confinement of his cramped prison cell in Toledo, Spain at a…

Tomorrow’s feast of St John of the Cross (1542-1591) turns our attention to one of the greatest masters and teachers of prayer in the history of the Church. His writings about the topic have depth and beauty but also a simplicity that ensures that his insights are accessible to us who try to pray and to pray better. There is so much of St John’s teaching on prayer that we could highlight. Here I would like to focus on one profound but simple insight that is found in his masterpiece Spiritual Canticle. The message of what John teaches here is about intercessory prayer and how to interpret our human needs or lacks – not as inconveniences but as opportunities for prayer and deeper trust in the God of love. Bear in mind that John wrote his Spiritual Canticlein the confinement of his cramped prison cell in Toledo, Spain at a…

George Bailey, the hero of It’s a Wonderful Life, is not a simple, good-natured cornpone from upstate New York; he is a man carrying a real bitterness within, that shows itself in little ways. A man who has had to cast aside every dream in order to do “the right thing,” the thrill-seeking Bailey is — thanks to an old injury — denied even dubious adventure of soldiering during World War II. Watch him spit in disdain at himself and his situation, after he has responsibly handled a blackout drill in his neighborhood. When the big man from the small town comes beeping by in a slick, shiny car and an even shinier woman, see George Bailey’s lip curl, not because his wife is wearing a baseball cap and sitting in his old clunker, but because she is so clearly content with the cap, and the clunker, and with trapped old George,…