“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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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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“Go to church.” I surprised myself when I said it. My friend had been quietly explaining her deep concern about her experience with public school. After years of home schooling her children, she and her husband had decided the kids needed socialization so they enrolled their children in school. Anxiety written all over her face,
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 Lure of the Journey: A Few Insights The lure of the journey is an ancient one. Whether striking out to head toward an unexplored west, risking a small fleet of boats to see what is on the other side of the earth or sending spaceships into the sky to discover other life in the
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The first time I actually thought about being in a fishing boat in a raging storm with Christ asleep on a cushion, was during a meditation given on that Gospel passage shortly after I converted to Christian Catholicism. The Legionnaire priest giving the meditation guaranteed my undivided attention because of the simple imagery he used
Joy and Sorrow: Essential Paradox During those years in which I considered myself an atheist, I discovered the writings of Kahil Gibran (only after I joined the Catholic Church did I learn that Gibran had been Catholic) ; there was one meditation of Gibran’s in particular that I loved: On Joy and Sorrow. Your joy
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Trust and faith Can we have trust in a person, event or object without faith? These two concepts are most commonly used in the religious context when we are speaking, thinking and writing about them; almost always we do so with a great attention to the ‘mystery’ of trust or the ‘blindness’ of faith. And
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