Theology

You really don't realize what your thoughts about God are until you have nothing left but the conviction expressed in the book of the prophet Jeremiah: My Father, my friend from my youth (Jeremiah 3:4).

Nearly four millennia after the stone ratification of the law on weekly rest, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reiterates the right of every person to rest and leisure.[1]

Sometimes, life is a succession of questions that God seems to ignore—until, at the right time, His silence provides an answer that is better than any answer in the world.

The way we pray in public reveals what our secret prayers are truly like. Beyond mere words, it is our attitude and motivation that give meaning and substance to prayer.

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? This is a question even specialists are concerned with, and it cannot be answered easily. It is difficult to predict what the future holds.

In the heart of the Garden of Eden, where everything seems perfect, there is an ancient struggle between freedom and restriction—a struggle we have all experienced.

Concern for the planet's climate and its ecology has occupied the world's attention for many decades. In the 1980s, the ozone layer depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons and similar gases was observed, and in 1987, the Montreal Protocol was finalised.

The concept of self care—defined as the entirety of ways in which a person understands how to solve their emotional problems and manage their anxieties—has become a real movement in the past two years with an entire industry ready to make our lives easier and more comfortable. For Christians, however, this trend has proven to be quite problematic: making our lives easier is...

I generally don’t like going to funerals, but they come in many different forms and feels. Some seem sadder than others; some feel more hopeful. But often there’s an unexpected bittersweetness. We are all there because of something good—the life, love and relationship that we are there to remember and honour—that has come to a tragic end, always too soon.

Life is a stage that we enter without a script, although we are constantly influenced by forces of varying visibility: social, educational, religious, economic, and political.

More than three decades have passed since the horrific genocide in Rwanda. Amid the outburst of murderous rage, there were people—both Africans and foreigners—who stood in the way of the hatred and bloodshed.

Over the centuries, strong but artificial tensions have been created between the Gospel of Paul (proclaimed especially by Augustine and many Protestants) and the "legalism" of the biblical writers James, Peter, Jude, and so on, which Catholic and Orthodox theologians have usually defended. What is at stake in these tensions is the authority of God's commandments and thus the duty or obligation to...

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place...

With packs and tents strapped to our backs, it took our little group of three several hours to reach the hidden valley. The lush, green rainforest was cool and damp and as we gingerly clambered over moss-covered boulders, we attempted to follow an almost non-existent track that wound its way parallel to the mountain stream.

The first few seconds are confusing, voices and blurred figures buzzing nearby, and it seems to me that some clumsy hands are trying to pull me out of this zigzag between sleep and wakefulness. I clearly hear a woman's voice announcing that I'm waking up and, before I'm completely out of this state of drowsiness, I realise I'm in intensive care.