Mary Tolentino

Mary Tolentino

It’s sad to think of a church in ruins.

Land and Sea, the entertaining CBC television documentary show that chronicles the joys and struggles of Atlantic Canadians, recently had an interesting feature on churches in the region that have fallen into disrepair.

So many questions, so few answers. That’s often where we find ourselves as Catholics and as people.

They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

It was the night before Christmas and all through the church, many creatures were stirring . . . especially the restless children.

I just can’t do it in my own. We vain humans have such difficulty admitting that.

Selflessness. That most admirable quality seems to be fighting extinction in our me-first society.

During a mid-1970s election campaign in Great Britain, William Whitelaw, the Conservative opposition leader, famously accused Harold Wilson, then Labour prime minister, of going round the country stirring up apathy. 

It’s something you never want to hear. You’ve believed and clung to something your entire life, something you stake your very existence on. Then someone suggests it’s all bunk, irrelevant, meaningless.

There is a time for everything and a time for every affair under the heavens. The author of Ecclesiastes could well have been writing a script for my summer.