Uncategorized
-
From protagonists to witnesses, blessing the next generation, and what I learned from a missionary motto How do you know when it’s time to go? Fr. Ronald Rolheiser is one of my favorite spiritual guides, and his book Sacred Fire has had a profound effect on my understanding of what it means to be a…
-
It’s comforting to know that even the best of them were works in progress. I’ve written a lot about St. Francis of Assisi over the years, but this is a particularly big year for Franciscans, as it is the 800th anniversary of his death. While the daily Mass readings aren’t necessarily selected with St. Francis…
-
What is “fruitful labor”, anyway? I’ve been thinking about work a lot lately. Partly, that’s because several friends from different parts of my life have reached out to pick my brain about their career journeys, which has made me reflect on my own. I even started using Substack to share my thoughts; I wanted to…
-
“Jeff! Ti aspetto da due anni!” Jeff! I’ve been waiting two years for you! Whenever we go to Assisi, we start each day with Mass. Six days a week, we walk down the hill from our hotel through town to the Basilica of Santa Chiara and settle into the intimate Chapel of San Giorgio (which…
-
What must it be like to fall apart in front of tens of thousands of people? What must it be like to be a performer, on-stage, unable to sing the song you made, the one that made you famous? Sometimes people who aren’t religious think that Christians have a delusional sense that, with enough belief,…
-
At what point do our scruples do more harm than good? Scrupulosity is not a term you hear a lot these days, even though I think it’s a burgeoning condition now in both secular and sacred circles. (We tend to go with the more pathological term, OCD.) Back in the day, Jesus poked at the…
-
The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing. I mentioned earlier this week that the daily Mass readings this week cover the return to Jerusalem and rebuilding of the Temple, but one of those readings has really stuck with me all week, because I think it speaks to a larger question…
-
It was a murder so heinous that it shocked the nation. So much did it command the national attention that, even in a gun-soaked country grown weary of mass shootings, the President of the United States traveled to join family members in mourning the lost. Staggering everyone, the spouse of the victim forgave the killer.…
-
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:17 This verse is part of a hymn about Christ that St. Paul quotes at the beginning of his letter to the Colossians. It’s a bold theological statement about the second person of the Trinity – that Christ, who we Christians…
