Child, have none told you? God is in your soul. That line, that stunning, arresting line is from a poem by Jessica Powers. Remember the Hallmark cards of a couple of decades ago? That is how I remembered Jessica Powers until today. August 18, the anniversary of her death in 1988. When I learned that Powers […]
Child, have none told you? God is in your soul! Read More »
“Love: I know nothing about it.” My statement was in reply to a priest who had asked if anything was wrong. Mass had ended and there I sat, alone in the big, cold New England Catholic Church. Staring at the quintessence of agony: the crucified Christ. Instead of coming to console with words or presence,
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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
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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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The ambiguity of talent 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, it’s someone with unusual ability. Organizational recruiters look for specific aptitudes in potential employees. We perceive these capacities as our own, as our property
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Saint Paul to the Galations: Also Us “You stupid, senseless Galations!” One of the last Divine Office readings before Ash Wednesday is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galations. He minces no words and we can practically see the spittle collecting at the sides of his mouth as we read the Apostle’s exhortations. St Paul,
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Revolutions: seen and unseen We think of uprisings, upheavals, often political like the American and French Revolutions. Of the earth’s rotation around the sun or of Mary’s reply to Elizabeth’s , “And why am I so favored that the mother of our Lord should come to me?” Not so much. Or never. December twenty-first was
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The War Room- the movie Prayer as war: the correlation of combat with happiness has long been one which applies to my life. Therefore, a movie about prayer and war was one I knew I wanted to see when my sister Lee told me about it. Fitting, because the spiritual life is fundamentally a battle.
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Christ asleep on a pillow The first time I actually thought about being in a fishing boat in a raging storm with Christ asleep on a cushion, was during a meditation given on that Gospel passage shortly after I converted to Christian Catholicism. The Legionnaire priest giving the meditation guaranteed my undivided attention because of
In the preface to his new book, The Road to Character, author David Brooks states that he wrote this book in order ‘to save his soul.’ Now that is a phrase that one seldom reads from the pen of a New York Times journalist or any other writers for that matter in this media saturated
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