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 “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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The immorality of stupidity Stupidity’s immoral? Run that by me again? Ever since my week-ago car accident that occured from my own stupidity, I’ve been pondering it. What it truly is, how and why it takes us over, individually and collectively. First, a brief background about the accident. Engrossed in Bishop Barron’s wonderful phrase, egodrama:
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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 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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Be made clean! A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,“If you wish, you can make me clean.”Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,touched the leper, and said to him,“I do will it. Be made clean.”The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. The Gospel of Mark Covid
New Year’s resolve: increase in humility. Huh? “New Year’s resolve: increase in humility.” What does that even mean? Indeed. It was just that suggestion during an Episcopalian priest’s homily that made me walk away from God at the tender age of seventeen. I can recall clearly my thoughts as I left the church for the
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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. 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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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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Lin Wilder has a doctorate in Public Health from the UT Houston with a background in cardiopulmonary physiology, medical ethics, and hospital administration
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