In 1885 Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch Impressionist Painter) visited a museum in Amsterdam to see Rembrandt’s famous painting, ‘The Jewish Bride’. Having seen it he said, ‘I would give ten years of my life if I could sit before this picture for a fortnight, with nothing but a crust of dry bread for food. My […]

Todays gospel is aobut Jesus’s little helper.  He is carrying a bag on his back and there he has five loafs of bread and two fishes. Maybe we wants to sell them, maybe he is keeping them for somebody. He is walking along  the road beside the lake,  heading up the mountain,  to listen to […]

There is a beautiful story of human kindness and compassion of two famous people who know what is important for them. It’s about 2 of the 3 tenors, Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. Even if you have never visited Spain, we all know of the rivalry between Catalans and Madrilenos. It so happened, that […]

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, playwright, and social reformer who was born in Kolkata in India in 1861. He won the Nobel  prize for literature in 1993.  One of his stories called ‘The Post office’ is about a little boy called Amal, who was confined to his adoptive uncle’s home by an incurable […]

A few years ago, Julio Iglesias sang a beautiful song, a very sad song, it was called: ‘me olvide de vivir’ – I forgot how to live’.  It talks about a man who was so taken up by his success,  and his ambition that he forgot the most important things in his life.  He lost […]

Sometimes we hear a sad song,  or we read a sad book,  or we see a film with a sad ending;  or sometimes we are just sad in our own hearts.  Sadness is something very real;  it can be for something small,  it can last a short time or it can be a great sadness,  […]

John Newton was the son of an English sea captain. When John was ten, his mother died, and he went to sea with his father. At 17, however, he rebelled against his father, left the ship, and began living a wildlife. Eventually John took a job on a cargo ship that carried slaves from Africa […]

Many years ago, there were two famous painters in Rome.  One of them was Raphael and the other was Michelangelo.  They were rivals.  One day Raphael was painting beautiful figures on a wall in a palace close to the river.  He went out for lunch and when he came back, he noticed on a part […]

Sorrento is a beautiful town on the Amalfi Coast.  Many years ago I celebrated mass there on a Sunday morning.  After the mass I met a lady, and we had a short coversation. She was from Stockholm in Sweeden. When she was a little girl, her family were not catholic,  they brought her on a […]

Saint Augustine, one of the greatest intellectual saints spent many years trying to understand the mystery of God. One day he was walking along the beach he saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell. He asked the boy what he was going to do with the hole. He was […]