Maybe I’m writing this and no one can relate but lately I have felt as though I am making priority for everyone else’s prayer requests and not my immediate family.
Summertime can be such a strange time. Blessed with a job related to education I get to spend it with my kids. This is both an enormous gift and a giant shift in routine.
We hit the road for a trip to the Grand Canyon in the first two weeks of June. Traveling 3,500 miles in a van is an experience I have never had. Once I digest all the “sanctification” that occurred I will write a different column about that. What I want to shout out in glory is how thankful I am to the Lord for giving me holy friends and “my angel.”
There are four distinct kinds of Christian prayer: There is Incarnational prayer, Mystical prayer, Affective prayer, and Priestly prayer. What are these? How are they different from each other?
We are continuing these catecheses speaking about apostolic zeal, that is, what the Christian feels in order to carry out the proclamation of Jesus Christ.
In St. Matthew’s Gospel, St. Peter asks Jesus how many times must he forgive someone who sins against him. “As many as seven times?” Jesus answers “not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:21-22).
In much of the secularized world, we live in a climate that is somewhat anti-ecclesial and anti-clerical. It’s quite fashionable today to bash the churches, be they Roman Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical. This is often done in the name of being open-minded and enlightened, and it’s the one bias that’s intellectually sanctioned. Say something derogatory about any other group in society, and you will be brought to account; say something disparaging about the church and there are no such consequences.
There are not many things that bring my heart as much comfort and joy as the combination of the Blessed Mother and what some might call “tacky” colored lights.
The upcoming Sunday Mass Readings are pivotal for our mission as disciples to go into the world and tell the good news: The Ascension of The Lord and Pentecost Sunday.
In the musical “Les Miserables,” there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fantine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness that life can deal a person. Abandoned by her husband, sexually harassed by her employer, caught in abject poverty, physically ill and dying, even as her main anxiety is about what will happen to her young daughter after she dies, she offers this lament.
After having seen St Paul’s personal zeal for the Gospel, we can reflect more deeply on the evangelical zeal as he himself speaks of it and describes it in some of his letters.
Easter continues as we celebrate the 5th and 6th Sundays of this season. We hear in the Gospels the reality of the Trinity, as the father is known by the son; the son is the face of the father; and the Holy Spirit is the giver of life. Christ the Lord dwells within and among the faithful.