The National Catholic Review

Faith

  • August 18-25, 2014
    Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Aug. 31, 2014

    Much modern talk about God tends to reduce the creator to a living doll, who wants to give us a divine cuddle. There is no doubt that the essence of God’s being is love, but the experience of that love and of God’s being is not always an experience of comfort and ease. God can disturb the relaxed meditations of the satisfied and push believers to the breaking point. The awful power of God can overwhelm.

  • August 18-25, 2014
    Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Aug. 24, 2014

    One of the most shocking, but welcome, aspects of the Bible is how often power is challenged. It occurs so often in the biblical tradition that we might take it for granted, but the practice of saying uncomfortable things to those who have authority, to speak from a position of weakness to those who have power to harm one’s life or position, is a rarity in antiquity and today. Implicit in this is that those who have power, even those with rightly-ordered...

  • August 18-25, 2014

    I was introduced to centering prayer after Laurie, my 18-year-old daughter, died from cancer. In the 24 years since then, centering prayer’s embodiment of kenosis, or self-emptying, has helped me in many ways to live with grief, especially by bringing to light one of grief’s most insidious manifestations: the creation of a false self caught up in a false drama.

  • On September 27, 1540, the Society of Jesus sprang into existence by the act of Pope Paul III, approving the outline of the Institute, which was presented to His Holiness by Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the new Order, and started on its glorious career of labors and sufferings for the Church of God, lasting for 233 years, till July 21, 1773, when, by the act of another Pontiff, Clement XIV, the Society' ceased to exist.

  • August 4-11, 2014
    Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Aug. 10, 2014

    If you examine older English translations of the Bible, like the Douay-Rheims or the King James Version, a quick search offers you more than 100 instances of the word ghost in each version. Most often these Bibles are translating the Greek phrase hagios pneuma as “Holy Ghost,” while current translations always render it as “Holy Spirit.” The word ghost in modern versions generally translates the Greek word phantasma, found in the...

  • August 4-11, 2014
    Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Aug. 17, 2014

    Some people just do not belong. They might be annoying, they might not “fit,” or they might not be the “right” sort of person. I think you know who I am talking about. That’s right. You and me.

  • July 21-28, 2014
    Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), July 27, 2014

    Here is a desire new and old: ask for anything in the world and it will be yours! Usually, in fairy tales and legends, three wishes are granted. Then, after poor choices (or ambiguously worded requests), the truth is discovered about what really matters. Lessons are learned the hard way. The First Book of Kings presents us with a somewhat similar scenario, but with the storied wisdom of young king Solomon on display. God “appeared to Solomon in a dream by...

  • July 21-28, 2014
    Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Aug. 3, 2014

    The Guardian newspaper reported on June 19 that according to a U.N. report, “the number of people forced to flee their homes across the world has exceeded 50 million for the first time since the second world war, an exponential rise that is stretching host countries and aid organisations to breaking point.... Half the world’s refugees are children, many travelling alone or in groups in a desperate quest for sanctuary, and often falling into the...

  • July 21-28, 2014

    Why can’t we finish this house?

  • July 21-28, 2014

    His name was George Adlerhurst.

    I was 8 years old, and he lived upstairs from us on the third floor. He had one leg and I liked him a lot. He was a nice man and he seemed to like me. I never knew what happened to his other leg. Then, one morning he became the first dead person I ever saw.