Some web browsing...............

Our first web browsing of 2013, pull up the chair, put on the kettle for a cuppa and take a few minutes............

Of course this week is Week of Prayer for Christian Unity so we encourage you to have a browse through the blog post we did on it during the week.

At the same time we would also like to let you know that we have added a number of new resources and links on our Lectio Divina resource page at the top of the blog page and also put up a new page with links and resources for the Year of Faith.

Spirituality: The Broken Branches of the Family Tree - Believe it or not, not even Jesus Christ himself was spared the tangled dynamics of a less-than-perfect family. It sort of makes our own little familial eccentricities a little easier to handle, doesn't it? Ellyn von Huben looks back at the Christmas season with her own wonderfully human brood, and gets us thinking about what it means to be blessed, rotten fruit and all.

John L Allen's annual review of the top under reported stories from the Vatican in 2012.

"Often, it is not the fear of failure that holds us back but the fear of success. We cling to the comfortable rather than step out into the possible. So we sit at home with a container of Cookies and Cream rather than take a chance on getting our heart broken again, or we down an entire bag of chocolate- covered pretzels rather than work on that resume that might get us out of a dead-end job. Or we eat cold pasta right from the refrigerator rather than sit down in silence and listen for the whisper of the Spirit speaking to our hearts.” - Continue reading here

Where’s Francis?! Three-Ton Underwater Statue Goes Missing! - an interesting take on favourite saints!

We posted a few links and reflections from the Taize pilgrimage to Rome that was held over New Years; once they visit to Rome was finished Br Alois and some young pilgrims continued to Istanbul-Constantinople to celebrate Christmas with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and Christians in that city. Br Alois gave some thought provoking meditations here.

L'Observatore Romano has a piece on the Silence in St Peter's Square.

The relics of St John Bosco are coming to Ireland in February 2013, here is a reflection on the visit currently happening in the UK.

Sealed Under Turkish Mud, a Well-Preserved Byzantine Chapel

A beautiful photo display of wooden orthodox chapels

It is National Vocations week in the USA at the moment and over at the USCCB blog a newly ordained priest reflects on his vocation - Pursuing a vocation and living a dream.

We often hear of buildings getting a "new lease of life", well in California, monks reconstruct a monastery from Spain!

Yad Vashem has published the documents of a closed-door meeting held in 2009, which led to the controversial caption underneath Pacelli’s picture being changed - The truth and the black legends against the figure of Pius XII

Pope Benedict XVI has taken to Twitter, why don't you take a quick visit over to see what he has been twitting in 140 letters or less @pontifex!

If friendship needs to be seen afresh in our time as an intimate love in its own right, distinct from the love of spouses or romantic partners, then we need stories of friendship that show us how its rediscovery is possible. I’m always on the lookout for such stories, and I just finished reading one of the best I’ve encountered in some time, Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship. - Continue reading the article here.

The Body of Christ: The Portal between Heaven and Earth - Were the Host a door I could open, I'd almost swear I could peer straight through it into heaven.

"When my friend Robin was dying, she asked me if I knew a priest she could talk to who would not be, as she put it, “too judgmental.” I knew the perfect man, a friend of our family, a priest conjured up out of an old black-and-white movie, the type who seemed not to exist anymore in a Catholic Church roiled by scandal. Like Father Chuck O’Malley, the New York inner-city priest played by Bing Crosby, Father Kevin O’Neil sings like an angel and plays the piano; he’s handsome, kind and funny. Most important, he has a gift. He can lighten the darkness around the dying and those close to them. When he held my unconscious brother’s hand in the hospital, the doctors were amazed that Michael’s blood pressure would noticeably drop. The only problem was Father Kevin’s reluctance to minister to the dying. It tears at him too much. He did it, though, and he and Robin became quite close. Years later, he still keeps a picture of her in his office. As we’ve seen during this tear-soaked Christmas, death takes no holiday. I asked Father Kevin, who feels the subject so deeply, if he could offer a meditation. This is what he wrote...." - Why God

Reflecting on prayer and spiritual conversation from an unusual location - Antarctica

The students of the Irish Dominican Province are currently in the process of recording a series which explains the Nicene Creed, as recited during Mass on Sundays. The Creed expounds the fundamentals of our faith. This series is aimed to give an easy to understand explanation of the different articles of our faith. Keep an eye out for it!