Holy Saturday: silence and triumph Over six weeks ago, we began what felt like an endurance test of penances: a Great Fast, intense prayer, spiritual reading, and almsgiving. The strangeness of time, the suddenness with which it’s over, startles. It makes us pause in wonder and awe at today’s silence: Holy Saturday. After their one […]
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It’s not about sin “The prodigal son gospel reading is the perfect ‘laetare‘ for the fourth Sunday in Lent…laetare means joyous…we are happy because we’re now halfway through Lent,” the new Pastor, Fr. Jose Alberto Vasquez at St. Patrick’s Church in Arroyo Grande, California, claimed. Then he exclaimed that reconciliation is not about sin but
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Sarah Leading Hagar to Abraham- Mathis Stom Forbidden fruit and its consequences This painting, Sarah Leading Abraham to Hagar by seventeenth century painter Matthias Stom hangs in the Gimaldegalerie in Berlin. Even a quick look at the figures portrayed by the artist conveys something unseemly, even odious. All too evident is the purpose of the
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Libido Domanandi and The Transfiguration of Christ Last Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent, the liturgical churches advised us to accompany Jesus’s forty day desert fast and temptations. This Sunday’s seemingly abrupt switch to the Transfiguration of Jesus may be puzzling. But as I ponder the reason for the Transfiguration of Jesus on the second
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A joyous Lent? It isn’t something that can be understand easily. This past Wednesday, the liturgical churches left ordinary time to enter forty penitential days in the desert with Christ. Today’s Gospel reading returns to the Baptism of the Lord and the beginning of Jesus’ three-year journey to the Cross. The Gospel of Mark starkly
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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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Good afternoon, fellow missionaries! It’s been exactly ten years since my husband John and I met the founder of the Haitian organization, Hands Together. Quite honestly, I have an agenda. I’m sharing those first impressions today in hopes that you’ll consider supporting Fr. Tom and his extraordinary mission. But perhaps more importantly, follow his advice:
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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
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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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