“When there is no food for three or four days, the children cry from the pain. So I make them mud cookies to fill up their stomachs.” The missionary priest, Monsignor Patrick Marron from Food for the Poor, quoted a woman living in a village of about two hundred people about 20 miles from Port […]
Mud Cookies: Imagine Feeding Your Kids Some? Read More »
Last December, the movie Silence opened to a conflicting maze of reviews. Some greatly praising the film and others exceedingly critical of the tale of the ‘apostate Jesuit priests’ of seventeenth century Japan. I watched it three days ago and am still pondering its meaning. The film is gripping and relentless. Both intensity and portent
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Conclave is the best of Robert Harris’ novels, high praise because Harris is an excellent writer of historical fiction. Each of his books reveals the writer’s journalistic background: Rich in detail and imagery, Harris’ extensive research for each story is evident. Conclave is all of that but much more. This story is riveting, sympathetic and
Conclave- Robert Harris’ New Novel of Power and Intrigue Read More »
For converts like me, the story of the prodigal son evokes a tsunami of emotion: gratitude, relief, sorrow and recognition are only a few. But upon reflecting on the well-known parable that Jesus tells the complaining Pharisees and scribes, I began to think about the older brother with an entirely different lens. Rather than my
The Prodigal Son Or the Older Brother? Read More »
Overcoming anger: the final spiritual struggle We feel it everywhere: Anger. Whether a seething whisper or bellowing roar, resentment, anger, even rage, feels like the fuel of this brand new year as the second decade of the twenty-first century heads south. The source is anyone’s claim. An endless laundry list of injustice, victims and causes.
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Walls of our unbelief: Edith Stein It was 1918. The young intellectual was nervous about her upcoming visit to Anne, the widow of Adolf Reinach, killed at the 1917 Battle of Flanders.How could she offer comfort?What could she say?Reinach had been a fellow scholar at the University of Freiberg, an assistant to the great philosopher,
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We use the word talent to connote skill or expertise. Often, we mean an individual with intrinsic aptitudes toward a thing, whether it be athletics or mathematics, someone with unusual ability. Frequently, organizational recruiters look for specific aptitudes in people considered potential employees. In our “flattened secularized culture” (I love this phrase used by Bishop
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In the physics of spirituality, it’s all paradox. St. Thomas Aquinas put down his pen, never to pick it up again, after four-thousand pages of his great work the Summa Theologica. He had reached question 99 when he quit. And when asked why, replied, “…‘All that I have written seems like so much straw compared to
On this Feast of the Good Shepherd, I think of a hike I took up in the mountains behind our home here in the high desert about two years ago. The lone lamb suddenly appeared in the brush and then raced into the high desert running as fast as she could, both dogs close to
Before boarding the United States Army Transport ship Dorchester back in January, 1943, a Dutch Reformed Chaplain named Poling asked his father to pray for him, “Not for my safe return, that wouldn’t be fair. Just pray that I shall do my duty…never be a coward…and have the strength, courage and understanding of men. Just
The Four Chaplains Read More »