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August 7, 2022
It is good for us to be here…the understatement of all time. Peter’s words, “It is good for us to be here…” evokes a smile at the massiveness of the understatement. But after reflecting on what it must have felt like to those three Apostles: Jesus tells them to come up to the mountain with Him, the smile fades into…awe, wonder and ineffable gratitude. Had He extended such an invitation before? Come up to the peak of Mount Tabor and pray with me. Usually we read that Jesus went up to the mountains and prayed. Alone. Perhaps on this day […]
July 31, 2022
Bishop Barron speaking about Elijah and the widow The law of the gift “Your being increases in the measure that you give it away.” Bishop Barron on Elijah and the widow. Bishop Barron’s sermon on the prophet Elijah is—as always—packed with wisdom, practical wisdom. He begins his homily by declaring this as one of his very favorite readings in the Old Testament. It’s easy to see why as we review the readings from the Book of Kings. In those days, Elijah the prophet went to Zarephath.As he arrived at the entrance of the city,a widow was gathering sticks there; he […]
July 24, 2022
Nothing’s worse than getting used to the magnificent. Years ago while living in the first house I’d ever bought by myself, I had a Ziggy calendar. And this was one of the cartoons for the month. Only in that version, Ziggy was shouting, “YEAH GOD!” I loved that cartoon. On many a morning while driving into the glory of a new sunrise to my job at Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center, I’d shout, “Yeah God!!” And pretend not to see the horrified stares of other drivers undoubtedly wondering if there was a crazy person beside them. I was […]
July 17, 2022
The movie Freedom: the heroic story of slavery in America and England. Once again, the article I’d written for today sits in draft form waiting completion. A good thing since I’ve still got a couple of books and articles to finish before finishing the piece. So why did my watching the movie Freedom eclipse what I was working on? After watching Cuba Gooding Jr’s excellent perfomance in his 2014 movie Freedom, I felt impelled to tell you about it. John and I discovered this film only because we subscribe to Pureflix, an alternative to Netflix. I learned about Pureflix from […]
July 10, 2022
Prayer: Discipline, Practice or Conversation? Prayer is all those things: discipline, practice and conversation—and more. It’s discipline because prayer requires some type of regularity. Eventually habit kicks in and the consequent sense of unease when left undone. For me, even the habit is insufficient but more on that later. Of course, practice applies as verb and noun: the more we practice prayer, the more proficient-prayer begins to feel right. And prayer as noun is a practice in the same sense that medicine and writing are practices—doctors, the good ones, are always learning. As are writers. And yes, prayer is a […]
July 3, 2022
Religion begins with experience Religion does not start out with the notion of God. It starts with a personal experience, the overwhelming experience of ultimate belonging. Religion of the Heart On the wall of the bathroom off the foyer in our new—to us— Texas home hangs a frame with two pictures side by side. They reveal two views of a snowy cross-country skiing mountain path in Banff , Canada. The photograph on the right shows a mountain stream, with snow-covered rocks. If I squint and use my imagination, I can see the image of a solitary bird. Pretty. Even arresting […]
June 26, 2022
Father of Prochoice: Dr. Bernard Nathanson Reading three books The Hand of God, Aborting America and Pillar of Fire is a bit much for a 2000 word article. Even for me. But when my friend Mary sent me an article called, “How Chuck Colson Thought Abortion Would End,” the weekly article I’d intended for today slid to the back burner. Dr. Nathanson was the catalyst for my coming out against abortion. Years ago, I was the Hospital Director at UMASS Medical Center and a brand new Christian Catholic. When asked by a third-year-medical student to attend a panel discussion-debate on […]
June 19, 2022
It’s June: the month of graduation speeches Over my professional life, I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events, but a mysterious and malleable thing, constantly changing, not just as new information emerges, but as our own interests, emotions and inclinations change. Each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present new meaning and new possibility. The question becomes for us now—for you graduates especially—what will we choose as our inspiration? Ken Burns Universityof Pennslyvania Commencement The goal of a graduation address […]
June 5, 2022
People don’t change their minds The simmering Roe Vs Wade controversy is now a rolling boil. The catalyst? The powerfully written prose with which Archbishop Cordelione explained Speaker Pelosi’s prohibition from the Eucharist. Until she changes her aggressive stand on abortion as a right and good for women. Nancy Pelosi’s response makes me wonder if she even read Cordelione’s document since she treats the dispute as another family disagreement. Clearly, she considers this as one of a list of policy disputes she has with him, rather than a portent of eternal life or death. “Now our archbishop has been vehemently […]
May 29, 2022
Detachment: Essential tool for sanity What do we do when faced with human heartache? Fr. Derek Sakowski asks the question in a recent article called Fixing vs Facing. So think about it for a minute or three. How do you react while watching or reading the report of the latest horrors in the Russian Ukrainian war? Or the firing of renowned Princeton classics professor Joshua Katz for defending truth and refusing to cow to the “narrative?” How about the latest school shooting where the teen shooter manages to take twenty-one lives before losing his own? And the— it seems, obligatory […]
May 22, 2022
In praise of work- The Christian in the world. If the title seems peculiar, particularly the correlation between praising work with the Christian in the world, by the end of this piece, I hope you’ll see the association between work and Christians living in the world. “So Lin, what will you do when you retire?” My friend Steve, then an intensivist at the Texas Medical Center where we both worked, knew my answer. He just wanted to see what happened when I said what I always did: That I never wanted to retire in front of the group of burned […]
May 15, 2022
We have no right to happiness: Last words of CS Lewis Right, it’s the title of the last article CS Lewis penned before he died. I’ll admit his statement consititutes a 180 for me since I have written numerous times about happiness—what I think is entailed to be happy. And more recently, thoughts that achieving happiness have more to do with avoiding unhappiness (the last I don’t think Mr. Lewis would disagree with.) Lewis begins his last written words this way: “After all,” said Clare. “they had a right to happiness.” We were discussing something that once happened in our […]
May 8, 2022
Listen carefully my child, Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to him from whom you departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you therefore, my words are addressed, whoever you maybe, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience. And first of all, whatever good work you begin to do you must beg of him to perfect […]
May 1, 2022
Forgiveness, ignorance and redemption We pray it every day. “…Forgive us as we forgive those who…” But too often, the routinized words fall from my lips and disappear into the petty details of the day’s tasks. I know well the essential correlation between forgiveness and redemption in my own life and therefore I’ve written about its essential components. Like the truth that forgiving ourselves is the first step in spiritual growth. And that the act of forgiveness can function as a razors edge. Until the last couple of weeks, however, I’d not considered the essential correlation of forgiveness, ignorance and […]
April 24, 2022
A little spark gives way to a great fire. I’ve known forever that I should read Dante’s Divine Comedy. After all, it’s one of the most famed of all literary writings. Hence we should all have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Inferno and Purgatoria, perhaps even Paradisio, right? But yet I managed to avoid reading it in undergraduate English classes. After all, I was an atheist, why would I want to read about hell, purgartory and heaven? Much later, after converting to Catholic Christianity, I made a few perfunctory attempts to read the epic poem. But it was […]
April 17, 2022
Father Stu, the movie How do I pay for all the blessings? It’s a question all of us ask, or should. But the phrase is Mark Wahlburg’s explanation for what he calls his “passion project,” the film Father Stu. Coarse, raw, and at times, vulgar, this movie is ideally suited for Holy Week and today, Resurrection Day. But it takes a while to understand this. The true story (Biopic, in Hollywood parlance) is that of Stuart Long, a former Montana boxer who moves to Hollywood to be discovered as an actor. Wahlburg’s Stu is obnoxious. And so is his father […]
April 10, 2022
He rides into Jerusalem He rides into Jerusalem amidst lavish, unrestrained, almost unanimous exaltation. Slowly-on the colt of a donkey. So many details here, in this story. Why a colt? So that a fully grown adult male on the colt prefigures the excruciating burden He will soon carry? To assure that these faces, now adoring, soon to turn vicious as they scream, “Crucify Him!”, to the ones who know His innocence, perhaps even sense that “Something greater than Solomon is here” but who lack the courage to defy the mob and confess the Truth that stands before them can see […]
April 3, 2022
Lenten Greetings from Texas Right, after twenty years in the west: eighteen in Nevada and a year and a half in California, we’ve moved to Texas. Precisely like every other major event in my life, this was not in the plan but an astonishing surprise, because, for me, it feels like returning home to Texas. A couple of essays ago, I alluded to “huge aliquots of chaos” in my life, meaning that selling the California place and buying this lovely oasis in the Texas Hill Country was, as you may imagine, not without it’s trials-some of which felt overwhelming. And […]
March 27, 2022
Most of us are settling for Bette Midler’s God. “I think most of us are settling for Bette Midler’s God.” It was a terrific headline. Hardly what anyone expects a priest to say when starting his homily on a Bible passage. Fr. Chris Kanowitz, smiled at the cognitive dissonance apparent in the expressions of each of us seated in front of him at that Thursday’s daily Mass. A newly ordained priest, he’d gotten the reaction he wanted: we woke up. Although it’s been close to five years since Fr. Chris grabbed and held the attention of everyone of us, I’ve […]
March 20, 2022
Our Citizenship is in Heaven Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,Nor have entered into the heart of manThe things which God has prepared for those who love Him. “Think on these things folks as we slog through Lent. Our citizenship is in heaven, ” said Bishop Barron in last week’s splendid homily on the Transfiguration of Christ, “Awaiting Resurrection.” It’s curious, isn’t it that the Church places the Transfiguration of Christ immediately after the temptations of Christ? But this year, I’m extraordinarily grateful because it really does feel as if I am “slogging through Lent.” And need reminders of […]
November 27, 2022
Hope holders: Reflections on Mary HOPE HOLDERS Do you wonder why these beliefs have taken root in your Soul? Roots which deepen, burrow into the secret places of mind and Heart? Year after year, prayer by prayer, tear by tear, doubt by doubt until Fixed? Do you wonder why you believe the impossible-god as infant born of a Virgin? Do you wonder at this girl child, at her trust in the incomprehensible Answer How can this be, she asked, how can this be, we ask? Why such Love For faded facsimiles […]
December 18, 2022
Let’s get away from the crowd Time goes so fast, doesn’t it? These blessed days of Advent are slipping away far too quickly. Christmas Day’s a week from today! And there are numerous holy practices still to be done. Let’s get away from the crowd and use these days to make straight the path of the Lord. Before dissolving into panic, a reminder: Christmas isn’t a day but a season. The Christmas Octave is eight days long, the Christian liturgy stretches the merciful, miraculous celebration ofJesus’s birth into eight holy days. And then the Christmas season continues for another twelve […]
December 25, 2022
Curbing the Aggressive, Capricious, Untrustworthy Intellect It’s a heck of a phrase, isn’t it? The adjectives strung together are strident and wholly negative modifiers of—the intellect. Huh? In our knowledge obsessed twenty-first century, the statement, Curbing the Aggressive, Capricious, Untrustworthy Intellect sounds like heresy. Unless we stop, really HALT. And think about the amount of words we read, hear, and maybe write. As a ‘wordsmith,’ I’ve had a love/hate relationship with words for most of my life. For example, when I fulfilled my promise to John that the move from Nevada wouldn’t include tons of books. Among the countless discarded […]
January 1, 2023
The virgin shall conceive Since the beginning of Advent, the readings of the Christian liturgy have been from the Book of Isaiah. But there’s one that is increasingly haunting with each pasing year. It’s King Ahaz’s perplexing refusal to his God: “Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as the nether world, or high as the sky! But Ahaz answered, “I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!” Perplexing, because he makes himself sound reverent and humble. But the Lord, though the prophet, reads the heart of the king and knows how […]