How shall I know this? The elderly priest Zachariah listens to an extraordinary, thrilling, joyous message from an angel of God. But when the angel finishes his magnificent prophetic message, instead of rejoicing at the news, the priest asks, “How shall I know this?” The angel’s unhappy with the priest’s disbelief and renders Zachariah mute […]
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Whatever’s Happening: Make it holy It is wonderful to be alive in asmuch as our true life is the life beyond; otherwise whocould bear the burden of this life if there weren’t a prizefor suffering, an eternal joy; how could one explainthe admirable resignation of so many poor creatureswho struggle with life and often die
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The virgin shall conceive Since the beginning of Advent, the readings of the Christian liturgy have been from the Book of Isaiah. But there’s one that is increasingly haunting with each pasing year. It’s King Ahaz’s perplexing refusal to his God: “Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as
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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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A little spark gives way to a great flame. I’ve known forever that I should read Dante’s Divine Comedy. After all, it’s one of the most famed of all literary writings. Hence we should all have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Inferno and Purgatoria, perhaps even Paradisio, right? But yet I managed to avoid reading
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Best way to disempower evil: Look at it Bishop Robert Barron’s sermon for the first Sunday of Lent- Three Levels of Temptation– is on St. Luke’s account of the temptations of Christ in the desert. Within the first few minutes of his homily, he says, “The best way to disempower evil: to look at it, to
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The cities of sin: the gates of Hell? A most peculiar title, isn’t it? It’s language is disquieting, even frightening, more terrfying even than Covid19 and its endless vaccines and most assuredly anti-woke. Sin… Hell… The Christian liturgical reading for last Sunday, October 24th was about the blind beggar Bartimeus. It’s one that always reaches
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Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend Modern woman and her psyche Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend—I do what’s good, defined my way. The end. No sense of sin? Friend, then how do you knowthe right, the wrong, the which-way-to-go? Honey, I simply do what I think right:I never harm, I
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It’s a peculiar phrase: “the passion of patience.” Almost oxymoronic- in its combining the vigor of the heft-filled word passion with the passivity neutrality of patience, it was coined by Venerable Madeleine Debrel. A former atheist turned Catholic apologist who lived and died during the last century. Her poem The Passion of Patience begins with this searing line: The patiences, these
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