The Young Messiah takes a year out of the life of Christ- a seven year old Jesus bar Joseph. If you have read Anne Rice’s Jesus Christ the Lord – Out of Egypt, you’ll soon recognize this intriguing, beautifully scripted, filmed and acted story of the God-child. If not, you may choose to seek out this […]
“The prodigal son gospel reading is the perfect, ‘leticia’ for the fourth Sunday in Lent…leticia means joyous…we are happy because we’re now halfway through Lent,” the new Pastor, Fr. Jose Alberto Vasquez at St. Patrick’s Church in Arroyo Grande, California, claimed. Then he exclaimed that reconciliation is not about sin but forgiveness. Several times, he
“You stupid, senseless Galations!” One of the last Divine Office readings before Ash Wednesday is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galations. He minces no words and we can practically see the spittle collecting at the sides of his mouth as we read the Apostle’s exhortations. Paul is admonishing the new community of Galations in
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Once Peter has been handed the keys to the Kingdom, Jesus harshly-even cruelly, rebukes him for his most understandable response to hearing Christ predict his own horrific suffering, rejection, humiliation and execution. Mark writes that Peter “took him aside and began to rebuke him.” We infer that Peter took Jesus away from the other disciples
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The tension between ‘Being’ and ‘Action’ is fundamental. We know the importance of balance in our work and the need to take time to simply ‘be.’ But for many of us, like Martha in the Gospel, activity is what we do, essential to our nature. Recently the razor’s edge between activity and non-action has cut
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Revolution. We think of uprisings, upheavals, often political like the American and French Revolutions. Of the earth’s rotation around the sun or of Mary’s reply to Elizabeth’s “And why am I so favored that the mother of our Lord should come to me?” Not so much. Or never. December twenty-first was the winter solstice- the
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In these few remaining days of Advent, I read and re-read the words of St. Paul about the futility of sacrifice and oblation or offering to God. First, he quotes the words of Christ himself: You who wanted no sacrifice or oblation, prepared a body for me. You took no pleasure in holocausts or sacrifices
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Despite the admittedly strange correlation, The Martian and Pope Francis, there is a striking parallel between the most unusual movie adapted from novelist Andy Weir’s self- published novel The Martian and the many speeches made by the Pope during his whirlwind tour tour last week. The power of the person. If there is a single
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The word politics has gained an almost entirely negative and pejorative meaning when used by many of us in these days of scandal, corruption and greed. Perhaps there was a time when politics as noun or adjective meant something other than a snipe but not in my lifetime. And so it was with great interest
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The War Room- the movie Prayer as war: the correlation of combat with happiness has long been one which applies to my life. Therefore, a movie about prayer and war was one I knew I wanted to see when my sister Lee told me about it. Fitting, because the spiritual life is fundamentally a battle.
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