Humility Rules It was an Episcopalian priest’s sermon about humility that was the tipping point for my faith., more accurately, loss of it. Walking away from that sermon, all I could think was, “I don’t want to be humble but wise. I want wisdom!” Only to learn, far too many years later, it’s the prerequisite. […]
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Politics of the common good That phrase, “politics of the common good,” reads as naivete. In a recent post, I wrote that politics is the pathetic name we give to the art of governing. Our immersion in our “shock and awe news” entices us to judge, criticize, and offend Jesus by neglecting his command to
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God as mystery “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they
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Doubt Isn’t the Opposite of Faith Fear is. Father Eric Ritter’s comment, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; fear is,” remains in my mind days after I heard him preach the homily for Saint Matthew’s Tuesday 6 AM Mass. The Gospel passage for Tuesday was: As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him.Suddenly
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A Lost Lamb and The Good Shepherd I wrote the following piece almost ten years ago. When it suddenly popped up mid-last week, I read it, and the memories of that hike flooded back. I decided its content contains essential lessons for this past Sunday’s Feast of the Good Shepherd: The lone lamb suddenly appeared
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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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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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Purgatory, prayer and CS Lewis Before Father Joe, I’d never thought of the souls in Purgatory as my brothers and sisters. In fact I didn’t think of them at all. But then I attended a November week of Masses in Half Moon Bay, California. They were celebrated by a newly ordained priest at Our Lady
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Death, Hope, Heaven, What are we here for, anyway? In my pre-Catholic ‘pagan’ years, I worried about death. Mostly because I feared standing before a God I did not think I believed in and explaining why I had wasted knowledge, understanding, and time. After twenty years as a Catholic, I would like to think that
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