Father Guido Gockel MHM writes a monthly column for the diocesan newspaper in Sabah, Malaysia. Loneliness Loneliness is a universal experience. It may affect everyone, the rich and poor, the healthy and sick. No one can take away their pain and suffering. What people go through in loneliness is often unimaginable, as we have seen during the…
ANSWERING THE PERENNIAL QUESTION WITH A RHETORICAL QUESTION WHO IS JESUS? WHY ASK ME? It took me by surprise that a Church prayer and action Group, Handmaids of the Lord, asked me to give them an online talk on WHO IS JESUS. Why ask me, was my immediate impulse – one, because I am no…
Last night I attended a special ecumenical service at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City to welcome the Chemin Neuf Community, a Roman Catholic Community with an ecumenical vocation. Inspired by the Community of St Anselm in Canterbury, this will be the second project of Chemin Neuf establishing itself within…
Sr. Samira Gill, a Presentation Sister from Pakistan, dedicated her life to serving the poor. But that left no time to understand her own spiritual needs. Then she joined the one-year Religious Formation Ministry Programme, or RFMP, at Loreto House in Blackrock, County Dublin, in Ireland. “I was ignoring myself,” said Gill, 38. “This course has helped me…
Augustine’s faith was essentially a thinking faith, endeavouring to bring together the belief of his heart and the abilities of his mind. This is well illustrated by the fact that his favourite verse from scripture was a [mis]quotation from Isaiah 7:9, ‘If you do not believe, then you will not understand.’ Faith seeks understanding: faith…
Today I went to visit one of the IDP‘s family I am helping here in Douala with the support of Fr. Adolf Pöll through Caritas – to pay the rent for them. It is a small single room; there’s no inside kitchen, no toilet only an outside toilet which all the tenants are using. They…
In large groups, people listen to Jesus and follow Him. Again and again it seems like a success story that can hardly be broken. The large mass of all these attentive listeners gives the impression that they want to take His message seriously and give it shape in their lives. People follow Him everywhere, even…
THE JOY OF MISSION APPEALS: Resonance with South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Bamenda….. Like many, I always begin my Mission appeals with self introduction of where I come from, where I studied and where I am based. I always wish I had time to say not just my geographical and external voyage which unintentionally may evoke…
A few years ago a small band of Trappist monks moved from a large – surplus to requirements – abbey near Deventer in The Netherlands to the small island of Schiermonnikoog off the northern coast. They thus revived an ancient monastic presence. (Schiermonnikoog in the local dialect means “grey monks’ island”) Their very modest small…
Next week (8 – 14 August) I will be on retreat at the small Trappist Monastery on the Dutch Island of Schiermonnikoog. A week of silence. Balm for the soul. A reporter once asked Mother Teresa of Calcutta, “When you pray, what do you say to God? She smiled and replied, “When I pray I…
Our culture makes us want to know who we are. It commands us to ‘be ourselves’, to be the masters and makers of our lives; this is the ultimate freedom. But the priest is not self-made; all he has, he has received. This is the mystery at the centre of his life and in every…
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