A little spark gives way to a great flame. 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 […]
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How do I pay for all the blessings? 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
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He rides into Jerusalem: Palm Sunday 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,
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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.
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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
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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
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Best way to disempower evil: Look at it Bishop Robert Barron’s sermon for the first Sunday of Lent- Three Levels of Temptation– is on St. Luke’s account of the temptations of Christ in the desert. Within the first few minutes of his homily, he says, “The best way to disempower evil: to look at it, to
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Sacrifice: Brought to the Citizens of the World in Real Time For the ten days, President Vlodomyr Zalensky has acted as David to the Goliath Russian President Putin. But this is not theatre. No, this is sacrifice: brought to the citizens of the world in real time. I must confess that prior to this week,
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No man can tame the tongue I should probably title this one “Part Two” because it’s inadvertently a continuation of the article that posted last Sunday on the epistle of James. The daily reading for Saturday February 19th’s Christian liturgy was again, St. James. The phrase, “No man can tame the tongue” shouted at me. And impelled
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The business of sin Until I listened to Fr. Alphonse’s homily at daily mass, I’d never thought of sin as a business. But the moment I heard his phrase, “the business of sin,” I knew the truth of the statement. As did the three others I commented to following the mass. His remarks followed the reading from
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