What could be better?
16 March 2008
What's greater: One or Zero?
We are in NY and the newspapers are filled with the news of the day. Page after page of scandal. I hope people didn't miss this story. This is the story of 8 Long Island teens who are changing the world for the better.
Do yourself a favor. Read this story and rediscover your faith in your fellow human.
Merrick teens design clothes, jewelry for charity
And their website:
One is greater than none (1>0)
hat tip: Br. Blue
Do yourself a favor. Read this story and rediscover your faith in your fellow human.
Merrick teens design clothes, jewelry for charity
And their website:
One is greater than none (1>0)
hat tip: Br. Blue
Welcome to Holy Week...
Nothing like an image of Christ in your altar cloth to start off Holy Week...
St. John de laSalle, Niagara Falls, NY
(There must be a way to make money here, somehow!)
15 March 2008
Seven Days...
h/t the deacon
=======
After spending the last few weeks in the desert of Lent, suddenly we find ourselves in an oasis, clutching long leaves of palms.
But like so many things you see after being in the desert, it’s a mirage. What we see, or think we see, is about to shift before our eyes.
Soon enough, the palms will be whips. The leaves will be thorns. Jubilation will become jeers. That is the paradox and the mystery of Holy Week. The liturgies of this week are powerful and primal. In the days to come, there is silence and smoke, fire and water, shadow and light. We are a part of something both ancient and new, and what we do this week reminds us of that. The altar will be stripped. The cross will be venerated. The tabernacle will be emptied. The Blessed Sacrament will be moved. Bells will be stilled.
And yet here we stand, at the gates to Jerusalem, palms in our hands and hosannas on our lips, beginning the arduous trek to Calvary.
It is easy to be distracted by the events of the world, and not really pay attention to what we will do this week. Somewhere, wars are raging, and politicians are squabbling. Somewhere, Easter eggs are being sold, and chocolate is being inventoried, and plastic grass is lining wicker baskets.
But not here. Not now. Not yet.
This week, take the time to wonder about what we are doing, and what we are remembering.For close to two thousand years, we have gathered like this, in places like this, to light candles and chant prayers and read again the ancient stories of our deliverance and redemption.
But are we aware of what we are doing? Do we understand what it means? Do we realize the price that was paid? A proper accounting is impossible. The ledger—His life, for our souls—seems woefully unbalanced.
So try this. This week, take a moment in each day that passes to wonder: What was He doing during this time of that one week all those centuries ago? What was crossing His mind on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday? What sort of anguish? What kind of dread?Has anything we have ever worried about, or lost sleep over, or agonized about, even come close?
He was a man like us in all things but sin. He must have been terrified, His mind buzzing with questions. Long after the others had drifted off to sleep, did He stay awake and worry? Maybe He sat up alone, late at night, whittling a piece of wood, the way His father had taught Him, until a splinter sliced His skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. He might have flinched and thought: Well, this is nothing. And still it stings. How intense would the pain of death become? How long would it last? How much humiliation would He be forced to endure, stripped and bleeding? And: What about His mother? Is there anything He could do to spare her from this?
As you shop for Easter baskets and dye, think of this. Ponder this. Wonder about it. Make it a kind of prayer.
And then, remember what we are doing, and why.
Because, of all the calendars in all of human history, this is the week that changed the world.
Originally published in the bulletin of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Catholic Church, Forest Hills, New York, on April 9, 2006 (Palm Sunday)
=======
After spending the last few weeks in the desert of Lent, suddenly we find ourselves in an oasis, clutching long leaves of palms.
But like so many things you see after being in the desert, it’s a mirage. What we see, or think we see, is about to shift before our eyes.
Soon enough, the palms will be whips. The leaves will be thorns. Jubilation will become jeers. That is the paradox and the mystery of Holy Week. The liturgies of this week are powerful and primal. In the days to come, there is silence and smoke, fire and water, shadow and light. We are a part of something both ancient and new, and what we do this week reminds us of that. The altar will be stripped. The cross will be venerated. The tabernacle will be emptied. The Blessed Sacrament will be moved. Bells will be stilled.
And yet here we stand, at the gates to Jerusalem, palms in our hands and hosannas on our lips, beginning the arduous trek to Calvary.
It is easy to be distracted by the events of the world, and not really pay attention to what we will do this week. Somewhere, wars are raging, and politicians are squabbling. Somewhere, Easter eggs are being sold, and chocolate is being inventoried, and plastic grass is lining wicker baskets.
But not here. Not now. Not yet.
This week, take the time to wonder about what we are doing, and what we are remembering.For close to two thousand years, we have gathered like this, in places like this, to light candles and chant prayers and read again the ancient stories of our deliverance and redemption.
But are we aware of what we are doing? Do we understand what it means? Do we realize the price that was paid? A proper accounting is impossible. The ledger—His life, for our souls—seems woefully unbalanced.
So try this. This week, take a moment in each day that passes to wonder: What was He doing during this time of that one week all those centuries ago? What was crossing His mind on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday? What sort of anguish? What kind of dread?Has anything we have ever worried about, or lost sleep over, or agonized about, even come close?
He was a man like us in all things but sin. He must have been terrified, His mind buzzing with questions. Long after the others had drifted off to sleep, did He stay awake and worry? Maybe He sat up alone, late at night, whittling a piece of wood, the way His father had taught Him, until a splinter sliced His skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. He might have flinched and thought: Well, this is nothing. And still it stings. How intense would the pain of death become? How long would it last? How much humiliation would He be forced to endure, stripped and bleeding? And: What about His mother? Is there anything He could do to spare her from this?
As you shop for Easter baskets and dye, think of this. Ponder this. Wonder about it. Make it a kind of prayer.
And then, remember what we are doing, and why.
Because, of all the calendars in all of human history, this is the week that changed the world.
Originally published in the bulletin of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Catholic Church, Forest Hills, New York, on April 9, 2006 (Palm Sunday)
14 March 2008
13 March 2008
11 March 2008
pope
is he at leisure, maybe reading?at work, maybe writing or signing some document?
at prayer?
is there a difference?
does it matter?
09 March 2008
"I have found the only answer...
...is to love You and be loved by You alone."
"My happiness is found in less of me and more of you..."
h/t Cleveland's Cyber Cleric
"My happiness is found in less of me and more of you..."
h/t Cleveland's Cyber Cleric
Not your Grandma's Jesus....
A Jesus who agrees with everyone and everything, a Jesus without his holy anger, without the hardness of truth and genuine love is no the real Jesus as he is depicted in the Scriptures, but a pitiable caricature. A concept of "Gospel" that fails to convey the reality of God's anger has nothing to do with the Gospel of the Bible.
True forgiveness is something quite different from weak indulgence. Forgiveness is demanding and requires both parities, the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven, to do so with all their minds and hearts. A Jesus who sanctions everything is a Jesus without the cross, for such a Jesus would not need the torment of the cross to save mankind.
As a matter of fact, the cross in being increasingly banished from theology and reinterpreted as just a vexatious mischance of a purely political event. The cross as reconciliation, as a means of forgiving and saving, is incompatible with a certain modern mode of thought. Only when the relationship between truth and love is rightly comprehended can the cross be comprehensible in its true theological depth.
Forgiveness has to do with truth. That is why it requires the Son's cross and our conversion.
Forgiveness is, in act, the restoration of truth, the renewal of being, and the amusement of the lies that lurk in every sin; sin is by nature a departure from the truth of one's own nature and, by consequence, from the truth of the Creator God.
Benedictus
Benedict XVI
True forgiveness is something quite different from weak indulgence. Forgiveness is demanding and requires both parities, the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven, to do so with all their minds and hearts. A Jesus who sanctions everything is a Jesus without the cross, for such a Jesus would not need the torment of the cross to save mankind.
As a matter of fact, the cross in being increasingly banished from theology and reinterpreted as just a vexatious mischance of a purely political event. The cross as reconciliation, as a means of forgiving and saving, is incompatible with a certain modern mode of thought. Only when the relationship between truth and love is rightly comprehended can the cross be comprehensible in its true theological depth.
Forgiveness has to do with truth. That is why it requires the Son's cross and our conversion.
Forgiveness is, in act, the restoration of truth, the renewal of being, and the amusement of the lies that lurk in every sin; sin is by nature a departure from the truth of one's own nature and, by consequence, from the truth of the Creator God.
Benedictus
Benedict XVI
Two from Jim Rohn
"The greatest gift you can give to somebody is your own personal development. I used to say, “If you will take care of me, I will take care of you.” Now I say, “I will take care of me for you if you will take care of you for me”."
"Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job."
h/t Brother Blue
"Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job."
h/t Brother Blue
07 March 2008
Mine eyes have seen...
"I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young. You are our hope, the young are our hope." - John Paul II WYD 2002
05 March 2008
Suffer with her....
The whole Church, insofar as she is in all seriousness (through the Eucharist) the body of Christ, must be co-crucified with her Head, and that, in the first place, without a retrospect onto the subjective suffering of Christians but rather through the sheer fact of her existence and the logic of her faith.
For the content of this faith is that the sinner as sinner is hanging on the Cross of Christ - really, and not only in some vague representation - and that, accordingly, Christ dies 'my death of sin' whilst I obtain from beyond myself, in this death, the life of the love of God. Paul, then, expresses the total situation of the Church with great precision when he asserts in Galatians 2:19-20:
It is no longer I who live (as an I abiding with itself as home), but Christ who lives in me. . . (which means, I am co-crucified with Christ. . .). The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God.
That puts into words the essential constitution of the Church's being. To become a Christian means to come to the Cross.
Mysterium Paschale
Hans Urs von Balthasar
For the content of this faith is that the sinner as sinner is hanging on the Cross of Christ - really, and not only in some vague representation - and that, accordingly, Christ dies 'my death of sin' whilst I obtain from beyond myself, in this death, the life of the love of God. Paul, then, expresses the total situation of the Church with great precision when he asserts in Galatians 2:19-20:
It is no longer I who live (as an I abiding with itself as home), but Christ who lives in me. . . (which means, I am co-crucified with Christ. . .). The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God.
That puts into words the essential constitution of the Church's being. To become a Christian means to come to the Cross.
Mysterium Paschale
Hans Urs von Balthasar
03 March 2008
Remember...
01 March 2008
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