Walking with the Holy Family
Christmas Eve has arrived and it is perhaps the day in which we most profoundly contemplate the circumstances of Christ’s birth. Jesus chose His parents and the circumstances…
All in its due season
Catholics too often need to suffer the famine of grace, the drought of love and peace, before they are willing to consider that just maybe life’s answers aren’t found in their own self-reliance. Interior freedom is only found by surrendering to God.
Perfect in Heaven
Advent continues, Gaudete Sunday is here, yet preparing our heart to receive our Lord on Christmas day in challenging. Mass readings from these first weeks of Advent focused on Jesus’ second coming and the final judgement. But ultimately, whether we end up in Heaven or Hell is our choice…
The one thing God cannot do
Everything acts in accord to its nature and so does God. He is love, His nature is love, so He can only be loving. He cannot not love you…
The beauty of powerlessness
From our beautiful and ancient Church heritage comes many prayers to aid us in the surrendering to Jesus of our loveless thoughts and self-protecting ways. Yet it remains a seemingly monstrous task to actually do it: to surrender to Him. And perhaps it is because at the center and foundation of surrendering is the primary truth of our own powerlessness.
I made Jesus suffer for me
A decade back, I prayed myself through the Ignatian retreat that the Jesuit father took Mother Teresa through in 1959 (found in appendix B of Come Be my Light). Sometimes the wording he gave in his instructions stood out for me. One such time was his instruction to her that stated, “To spend a day in reparation for the sufferings I have made Jesus bear for me.”
I grew up hearing Jesus suffered for me on the cross. But I’ve never heard I made Jesus suffer for me. Wow, a paradigm shift.
Outliers
In the secular world, people are characterized as outliers in many ways. Not too long ago, a well-funded and orchestrated protest against the one-percenters of the ultra-high wealthy took place as Occupy Wallstreet. In the world of science and education, the outliers are those with the ultra-high IQ. In this Gospel which we recently heard in mass, Jesus is calling us to belong to a different group of outliers: those who truly love Him.
Praying with children
Like all faith traditions, the Catholic Church has been losing its children to the secular world for the past 60 years. How would the world be different today if children, and parents, learned simple ways to pray?
Ezra’s atonement
Recently our mass readings included the passage of Ezra praying for God’s pardon on behalf of his people. It made me think how often I’ve prayed in remorse for my own offenses against God, and those of others, but not ours. It might seem a trivial distinction but those trivial details are usually the most important…
Blessed Sacrament Meditation
A tattered piece of paper is discovered in a dusty old attic. From this humble beginning, A Meditation Before the Blessed Sacrament grew in use around the world. With permission, it is reproduced here.