Faith
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Sept. 1-8, 2014Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Sept. 7, 2014
What does it mean to love your neighbor? Paul says that “love does no evil to the neighbor” and that “love is the fulfillment of the law.” How do these two statements coalesce to produce a practical Christian ethic of behavior? One is stated negatively—love does no evil—while the other is stated positively—love fulfills the law. But how do we know when we are enacting these demands?
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Sept. 1-8, 2014Exaltation of the Holy Cross (A), Sept. 14, 2014
We are called to travel many paths, some that challenge us, others that inspire us. To trust in God is to trust that whatever path we are now on is the one that will ultimately bring us to the Promised Land.
This is easy to say, especially when one’s path is not meandering through war zones or famine, caught up in the horrors of this world, and it is important not to dismiss the journey itself as insignificant. It is the locus...
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Sept. 1-8, 2014
I have come to trust my stumbles. Philosophically, I believe stumbling to be the natural human gait and that humanity’s steady march of progress has, indeed, generally been a matter of tripping, bumping into walls and clipping corners. As for my own march of progress, such as it is, it’s the times when I have assumed the most confident stride that often have proved the most delusional and disappointing.
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Sept. 1-8, 2014
I stayed on the phone with my husband as I drove up to the prison, its jagged stone facade stretching outward from a large, pointed, central turret. If it had not been nestled within the beautiful, rolling landscape of the lower Catskill mountains, I thought, this building would look much more ominous. I had taught plenty of college classes before—but never inside a maximum security prison. This semester, my students would be incarcerated men, some of them...
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August 18-25, 2014Twenty-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.
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August 18-25, 2014Twenty-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...
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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.
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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.
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August 4-11, 2014Twentieth 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.
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August 4-11, 2014Nineteenth 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...