May – June 2017

Confession during a youth pilgrimage, Chile

My aunt in her last moments was asking for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Since it was Holy Week we weren’t able to get a priest. She died on Holy Thursday and I felt so sorry for her not receiving Holy Communion. Father, will her soul be at peace with the Lord? Were her sins forgiven?

Part of the background to this, I have learned, is that your aunt had just retired and had moved from the island where she had been living for many years to a town on another island and became gravely ill within a number of days. She was taken first to a local hospital for immediate treatment but then taken to a larger city hospital that doesn’t have a Catholic chaplain. And if the Chrism Mass in the cathedral of a diocese takes place on Holy Thursday morning, as I know it did in this case, it makes it difficult for a priest to be available for the sick, since he has to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper that afternoon in his parish, possibly in two locations.

January – February 2017

I am amazed at how some people can very well testify about their personal encounter with God, how vivid their experience of God manifesting Himself. I am happy for them but at the same time I envy them. In my lifetime I can’t remember a moment of a close encounter with God. Why can’t I feel Him? Is there something wrong with me? What must I do?

Dublin buses [Wikipedia]

In 2013 years I was traveling on a bus in my native Dublin, Ireland. There was a girl of about 16 or 17, accompanied by a little boy of about three, standing near the driver. She kept talking into her cell-phone and seemed agitated. Finally she asked passengers near her, ‘Have we come to Blanchardstown Centre yet?’ I was astonished as I had boarded the bus after it had come from there. I knew by the girl’s accent that she was from Dublin. She was lost in her own city. I figured that the boy was her brother, but possibly her son.

July-August 2016

We cannot solve all the problems in the world. Every day there is a cause promoted and a need from somewhere. If I am to be generous, when do I say that it's my turn to give? Does it also have to do with feeling the need to do so? Since there are also fake needs/causes and false generosity.

21,000 who responded to a specific, temporary need and made a difference

Yes, indeed, none of us can solve all the problems of the world nor should we attempt to do so. We are faced with endless needs that affect us.

Father, how true is it that the person who committed suicide cannot be brought to the church for a funeral Mass?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church deals with suicide in numbers 2280 to 2283. The second part of 2282 reads: Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide. No 2283 states: We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.