Books

Arsonist of the Heart

Arsonist of the heart is the last line of a poem by theologian-poet John Shea about the road to Emmaus. Shea’s reflection on the liturgical Gospel reading for Wednesday compels more than a cursory read of the too-familiar Gospel passage about Jesus’ disciples who have decided to get out of town: the road to Emmaus. […]

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Mitigating the Tyranny of Time

Mitigating the Tyranny of Time

Mitigating the Tyranny of Time “When were you the happiest?” “High school.” My husband, a therapist, declares his patients invariably answered his question , “What’s the happiest time in your life?” with those two words. For over twenty years, he counseled former combat veterans. That’s a lot of people whose happiest years were decades earler.

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EWTN, Mother Angelica and Miracles

EWTN, Mother Angelica and Miracles Because I had what my friend Jack Capparro vividly termed “the grunge,” I isolated mself last week and didn’t leave the house…at all. For a daily Communicant like me, missing daily Mass feels like sin. And then I remembered EWTN’s daily eight am Masses with the Franciscan Missionaries of the

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Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength: Willpower

Rediscovering the greatest human strength: willpower In their book, Willpower: Redisovering the Greatest Human Strength, authors Roy Baumeister and John Tierney claim that success, however defined, materially, financially or psychologically, relates to self-control. They confess their original belief that the religious teachings about character, morality and will, were restrictive and punitive. But when their own

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Jubilee, Hope and A Couple of Movies

Jubilee, hope and a couple of movies Does the phrase read like a series of non sequitors? Jubilee, hope and a couple of movies? Assuming that’s a yes, let’s work backward to integrate them, beginning with “a couple of movies.” Until I met my husband, I had neither heard of nor watched Frank Capra’s classic

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A Nation Founded on Thanksgiving: America

A nation founded on thanksgiving. Only because of Edward Winslow’s letter do we know of the first American thanksgiving turkey dinner in 1621. Mayflower passenger Winslow, was the leader of the Plymouth colony and would later serve three tems as governor of Massachusetts. Certifying the astoundingly friendly alliance beteen the Indianss and English colonists, Winslow

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We Should Kneel Down in Gratitude!

I wrote this article over two years ago. This looming election begs for reflection on our nation and its unarguably providential origins. And so biographer David McCoullough’s words warrant meditation. We should kneel down in gratitude! McCoullough’s comment, “We should kneel down in gratitude!” applies, of course, to more than the personage of George Washington.

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