Epistle Reading: Jonah 3:1-10 Gospel Luke 11:29 There are a lot of people in the world like Jonah, full of zeal and devotion to their cause. Many dismiss them as crazy. Priests are inundated and end up spending copious amounts of time listening to bizarre stories of people who tell stories almost as outlandish as the reading we […]
Jesus says, “This is how you are to pray.” We are, then, blessed with the most beautiful prayer, shared with us by Jesus: The Lord’s Prayer, also known as the Our Father. Today, we are still in the early days of our 2014 Lenten journey. How many of us are asking Jesus to teach us […]
When Catholics talk about Lent, we usually talk about what we are going to change in our lives. We view our lives as deficient, and in order to improve them, we must either subtract (give something up) or add (take on extra prayers, devotions, etc) to our lives to grow in holiness. This has been […]
Twelve nuns kidnapped by jihadists in Syria last December were set free yesterday (Sunday, March 9th). Patriarch Gregorios III, head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, broke the news to a team from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), who had just arrived in Lebanon to visit projects supporting refugees from Syria. The Damascus-based […]
A few thoughts on Lent for 2014…. I need a good Lent…. Because I have an awareness of how undisciplined my life can sometimes be. I’d like to blame my distractability on my ADD, but in truth it is mostly due to the honed chaos I’ve developed in my life. I dread nothing more than […]
In a way, the whole message of the Gospel is summarized by the Triduum. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil are themselves paralleled, too, by long swaths of human history. Humanity was in communion with God, and then fell into sin and denial of God, only to have God go very far to […]
At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for 40 days, tempted by the devil. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. —Mk 1:12-13 “A veil of thick darkness hangs over Paul’s visit to the Arabia.” [1] The Reverend George Rawlinson, a 19th-century […]
Mass Readings for Saturday, March 8: Isaiah 58:9-14; Psalm 86:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Luke 5:27-32 In today’s first reading from Isaiah he tells us what to do to lead a holy life according to God. “If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; the light shall become for you like midday; then the […]
As I crossed the great divide of puberty, I formed a vivid image of God.. He was a grumpy old man on a throne with a frown on his face. Every time anyone tried to have a little fun, he’d shout “Thou shalt not!” But to really live and not just exist, you had to […]
Pope Francis looked up during his General Audience on Ash Wednesday and ditched the script, putting aside his prepared remarks to question the spectators gathered for the weekly encounter, “I want to ask: Your children, your kids—do they know how to make the sign of the cross? Do your grandchildren know how to make the […]
Reading: Is 58:1-9; PS 51:3-4, 5-6AB, 18-19 The words of the first reading from Isaiah 58:1-9 are like brilliant beams of light, cutting through any false notions we might have about this season of repentance that we call Lent. Often we tend to think of Lent as a time to share in the suffering of Christ yet when we […]
A reflection on the Responsorial Psalm for today (PS 1:1-2, 3, 4 AND 6) and the Gospel (LK 9:22-25) Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Next to the […]
Over the past two weeks, the “reform of the reform” has found its way in the news, and in a lot of discussion within the Catholic commentariat. It all started when Fr. Thomas Kocik, one of the leading lights of the reform of the reform, wrote an article stating that the current reform movement was […]
Pope Francis has asked Catholics to meditate on poverty this Lenten season, by focusing his message for Lent on St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, that Christ “became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). The Pope’s emphasis on poverty dates back to the earliest days of his Pontificate, when […]
Meditation and Questions for Reflection or Group Discussion (Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7; Psalm 51:3-6, 12-13,17; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11) Overcoming Temptation by Standing Firm on Who You Are in Christ If you are the Son of God … (Matthew 4:3) Imagine if Jesus came up to you today, embraced you, and said, “You are my greatest […]
“When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Ash Wednesday allows us to practice what Jesus taught as we observe this first day of Lent. We fast and receive God’s blessing with ashes on our foreheads to express our sorrow for offending Him. Today’s […]
If you still haven’t decided what is beneficial and appropriate for you to fast for Lent, you’re not alone. For most of us, the really inspired ideas are pretty rare. It’s easy to turn Lent into a diet, or a way to boast publicly of doing without something pleasurable. I don’t know if we need to identify […]
As we begin our Lenten season tomorrow (our Eastern brethren began it yesterday), we Catholics are given the opportunity to once again discover the key to spiritual growth, and to once again correct our vices and imperfections we have accumulated since last Lent. In many Catholic circles today, Lent is viewed simply as “what food […]
Lent is coming soon, and many of us are already pondering what resolutions we’ll choose this year. No resolution can succeed without prayer, however, so here’s six ways to improve your prayer life this Lent. 1. Make a daily prayer date with God. Best friends talk every day, so use the days of Lent to renew […]
An urgent appeal for prayer has come from one of Ukraine’s most senior Catholic bishops as momentous political change sweeps the country. Archbishop Mieczys?aw Mokrzycki, President of Ukraine’s Latin-rite Catholic Bishops’ Conference, highlighted the “great solidarity” of people worldwide, shown in prayer and practical aid. The archbishop’s comments, given in an interview with Catholic charity […]
I went into Arabia (Gal 1:17b). To Arabia, but to what part? To Mount Sinai, to the Red Sea, and to the city of Petra, a tour of salvation history, for God through his grace equipped Paul to be the Ambassador for Christ. To prepare himself, Paul spent forty days and forty nights in the desert […]
If you feel called to give up a Facebook for Lent this year, you aren’t alone. In social media parlance, the idea is “trending.” Before I explain my reasons for seriously curbing my Facebook use this season, let me first acknowledge that social media enables me to do my work as a writer with great […]
To wrap up this series on evangelization, it would be good to review briefly what’s been noted in previous articles in the series and to offer some reflections on both the goal of evangelization and the methods that bring about the fulfillment of that goal. In the first article I noted that evangelization is often […]
A local priest has reported on the looting, killings and rape that have followed the withdrawal of Seleka rebels into Chad from the Central African Republic, including the attempted rape of two religious Sisters. Father Aurelio Gazzera, Caritas Director of the Diocese of Bouar, made his report to international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the […]
