HAVE YOU FOUND yourself wondering if Jesus loves you? Think you don’t deserve this love? If you want these doubts dispelled, try praying the Stations of the Cross.
Guest Columnists
A Lent to Remember
THE BEST LENT OF my life involved getting up every day at 5:30 a.m., hiking for miles through ankle-twisting, cobblestoned city streets, dodging drivers for whom traffic laws were traffic suggestions, avoiding the chaos of transit strikes and other civic disturbances, and battling bureaucracies civil and ecclesiastical – all while 3,500 miles from home sweet home.
Meatless Fridays: Of Faith and Fish
by Maureen Pratt FOR CATHOLICS AND other Christians who observe meatless Fridays, fish figure prominently, and this makes me (pardon the pun) happy as a clam. But I understand that some people are not as enthusiastic as I am about fish. The smell might be off-putting, the texture “slimy.”
Lent and the Culture of Greed
We live in a culture of greed where grasping for wealth and security can mask the emptiness we feel. Perhaps the Gospel story of Lazarus and the rich man would make a challenging daily reflection during Lent.
A Modest Defense of the ‘Liberal World Order’
I think liberal democracy is in grave danger… And yet I think there are things that can and must be said for the “liberal world order” and for liberal democracy.
Paul, Apollos and Cephas, All Over Again
IN APRIL 2016, Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, England, issued a pastoral letter on the interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia” (the pope’s apostolic exhortation on marriage) and re-affirmed the Church’s long-settled teaching: The divorced and civilly remarried, while members of the Christian community, are not living in full communion with that community, and should not present themselves for Holy Communion until their manner of life changes or their irregular marriage has been regularized under Church law.
Two Episcopal Firsts, Two Different Times
ON JAN. 9, 2017, I was at the Mexican American Catholic College in San Antonio, Texas, speaking to a group of second-year theology students from Saint Meinrad Seminary in Indiana.
A Eucharistic Embrace
Second in a series, EARLY IN HIS book “Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist” (New York: Doubleday, 2011), Ronald Rolheiser stresses that the Eucharist is a great mystery that we will never completely understand. He confesses that in his studies he took excellent courses on the Eucharist, but in the end he realized that he did not understand the Eucharist.
Synod-talk, Again
ON JAN. 13 THE General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops published a “preparatory document” for the 2018 Synod on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment.
Confession Helps Readjust Our Focus
by Maureen Pratt, “CONFESSION IS GOOD for the soul,” they say. I agree. I also find that it helps us to live well no matter what our station or situation in life, especially if we make it a time to move fully out of our own comfort zones.