For every illness, there are several medicines and treatments. But so long as there is no gentle hand swift to serve and no generous heart swift to cherish, I don’t think that a person can ever be healed of that terrible illness which is lack of love. No one among us has the right to [...]
I have been trying to write about Easter and the Resurrection for days, but I cannot get down anything that’s worthwhile. I cannot seem to move past Holy Saturday. Why Holy Saturday? Liturgically, it’s the most neglected day in the entire Church year. On this day no Mass is prayed, and the Eucharist is only given [...]
I have to be honest- I didn’t feel very well on Saturday. As a matter of fact, it was a pretty bad day. When I got off of work, I went from the library to the church for the vigil Mass, which is my usual. I appreciated my few minutes of meditative prayer, and then sat down to [...]
I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. – David Grayson (1870-1946)
The twenty-fifth day of December. In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth; the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood; the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of [...]
Shamelessly lifted from Catholic Anarchy. [Emphases mine.] With Christ, God has injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God’s reign is now inaugurated in human time. On this night, as we Christians have done every year for twenty centuries, we recall that God’s reign is now in this world and that Christ has inaugurated [...]
I have been deeply troubled since the President announced last week a stepping up of the war in Afghanistan. Father John Dear, S.J., wrote an article this week that sums up entirely my feelings on the matter. I’m sharing a few of the highlights. Last week at West Point, President Obama cited his reasons for [...]
I have spent a lot of time thinking about love. Probably too much time, if I’m honest. I never manage to nail it down, but I always have a working definition. Love hurts. No, not like that hideous song. Love should empty us. Sometimes we are tricked by our culture into thinking that love [...]
I ran across this interesting snippet a few days ago: Christian discipleship requires being held in love and being held accountable. We simply cannot follow Christ apart from a community that holds us in compassion and calls us to accountability. Solitary discipleship is a misnomer. We cannot be Christian alone. – Kenneth Carder, Duke Divinity [...]
“As the Father sees in every person the features of his Son, the first-born of many brothers and sisters, so the Secular Franciscans with a gentle and courteous spirit accept all people as a gift of the Lord and an image of Christ. A sense of community will make them joyful and ready to place [...]
