by Father Robert Lauder AS A NEW YEAR’S gift Father Joe Kelly gave me small paperback book. Father Kelly is a New York Archdiocesan priest who is now assigned as a spiritual director for seminarians in residence at Douglaston. More than 35 years ago when he was a seminarian, he took some of my philosophy […]
Arts and Culture
Fr. Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University and the author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).
Author Alice McDermott Set to Discuss Faith and Literature
by Father Robert Lauder IT WAS NOT until I began to teach at St. John’s University that I realized how important endowed chairs are at a university. I was part of a committee to have an endowed chair in theology established in honor of my friend and teacher, Father Paul McKeever, shortly after his death. […]
Criticism Tempered by Prayer
by Father Robert Lauder LAST NOVEMBER, I attended a special event sponsored by Commonweal magazine at New York University, Manhattan. The day was so wonderful that I wish I had been able to tape the entire day, not just the panel discussion but all the private discussions going on among the people who attended. The […]
Lent Is For Listening to God
by Father Robert Lauder I am starting to write this column shortly after engaging in centering prayer. Part of centering prayer is being silent with God, giving God time to speak to you. I notice that more and more in homilies I urge members of the congregation to set aside time to listen to God. […]
Reflecting on Christian Joy
by Father Robert Lauder RECENTLY I GAVE a talk on Christian joy and found preparing for the talk to be an important learning experience. I thought I knew what Christian joy was until I had to speak about it and then I found that it was easier to say what it was not, than what […]
Film Evenings Inspire Thoughtful Discussion
by Father Robert Lauder About 10 years ago a lawyer friend of mine told me that he would like to learn more about movies, that he would like to deepen his appreciation of great films and be able to distinguish a masterpiece from other films. He arranged with his wife and me to have […]
Understanding Who We Are: Images of the Human Person Are Images of the Living God
by Father Robert Lauder MANY FACTORS GO into a person’s spirituality. From schools to friends, from media to spiritual advisors, from scripture to liturgy, there are many realities that might influence how a person views himself or herself and how that person views God. I have come to see that the images we have of […]
Two Christian Spiritualities
by Father Robert Lauder, I HAVE COME to identify two different spiritualities that have been part of my experience at least since college years. One I call eschatological Christian spirituality and the other I call incarnational Christian spirituality. In identifying these two spiritualities I have relied on many authors, perhaps the main one being Father […]
Hope — The Earthly Virtue
by Father Robert Lauder, Lately, the expression “the earthly virtue” seems to me to fit the virtue of hope. This is probably due to the way that I think about the virtue as having one foot in the next world and one foot in this. Hope is focused on the next life with the risen […]
Earthly Beauty Can Speak To Us About God and Faith
by Father Robert Lauder AS I MENTIONED in last week’s column, I no longer experience anxiety in trying to turn out a weekly column. Even anxiety can’t last for 40 years! However I do find that I am frequently looking for ideas and insights that I might use in a future column. Some time ago […]