Newman Centers-Lighthouses of grace “My name is Matthew, and I am a senior at Cal Poly. Four years ago, when I arrived at the college, I found the ‘freedom’ of being away from home intoxicating…too much so, in fact.” Newman centers-lighthouses of grace. The good-looking Hispanic young man looked out at the parishioners at St. Patrick’s […]
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Be Safe and be holy My friend Meg’s salutation on the update of her life I requested since we last spoke keeps ringing in my head: “Be safe and be holy.” That phrase, “Be safe,” has become endemic since the arrival of the corona virus and, to me, connotes the obsessive cleaning, masking and endless
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I have no human enemies “As a disciple of Jesus, I have no human enemies. As a disciple of Jesus, I am not allowed to have any human enemies. I might be theirs. They are not mine. They are just rebels. I have often in my life been a rebel. So have you. And you
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It is good for us to be here…the understatement of all time. Peter’s words, “It is good for us to be here…” evokes a smile at the massiveness of the understatement. But after reflecting on what it must have felt like to those three Apostles: Jesus tells them to come up to the mountain with
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Prayer: Discipline, Practice or Conversation? Prayer is all those things: discipline, practice and conversation—and more. My reaction to his words was pure fear. You might be thinking that fear is fitting, for fear and faith intertwine. And of course, you’re right. But mine was abject terror… of Him. When I’ve said that to Catholic and/or Christian
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Religion begins with experience Religion does not start out with the notion of God. It starts with a personal experience, the overwhelming experience of ultimate belonging. Religion of the Heart On the wall of the bathroom off the foyer in our new—to us— Texas home hangs a frame with two pictures side by side. They
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Time: Ordinary and otherwise Time. It’s kind of like breath, or air, or water. We consume them as we do all commodities, thinking we have all we need, all the time in the world. Until suddenly, we don’t. Maybe because of serious illness when I was four, time has always felt like gift to me.
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People don’t change their minds The simmering Roe Vs Wade controversy is now a rolling boil. The catalyst? The powerfully written prose with which Archbishop Cordelione explained Speaker Pelosi’s prohibition from the Eucharist. Until she changes her aggressive stand on abortion as a right and good for women. Nancy Pelosi’s response makes me wonder if she even read Cordelione’s
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Listen carefully my child, Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to him from whom you departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you therefore, my words are
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Forgiveness, ignorance and redemption We pray it every day. “…Forgive us as we forgive those who…” But too often, the routinized words fall from my lips and disappear into the petty details of the day’s tasks. I know well the essential correlation between forgiveness and redemption in my own life and therefore I’ve written about
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