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Augustine was right, of course. One way of thinking about the essential brokenness of human nature from a Judeo-Christian perspective is that all of us are guilty of breaking the first of the Ten Commandments. All of us, at some level, worship gods we have created instead of the God who created us. In the
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After a wonderful retreat, we did about 36 hours of tourist stuff in Rome, but we did go to mass in St. Peter’s, which remains a great way to skip the line and get in before the tour groups overrun it. The gospel reading that day (Thursday) really struck me. Not because I hadn’t heard
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Look for the lepers. I mean, I get the value of Fred Rogers’ quote, “Look for the helpers,” as a way to soothe children in times of stress by encouraging them to focus on those who are doing good in times of tragedy. But if you want to find where God is, look to the
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“Ted Lasso is my new religion.” Since I got hooked on the AppleTV+ series Ted Lasso after its first season, I’ve witnessed the tidal patterns of word-of-mouth promotion that I guess is how ideas spread these days. Every few months, a friend on social media will ask a variation of, “Is Ted Lasso worth watching?”
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Not to sound all judgy, but I tend to think that there’s a right and wrong way to read. For those who were raised as Christians, there’s a tendency to read the Bible piecemeal, where we pull out a line or two from what is a diverse collection of writings cultivated over many generations, and
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Where is God in this? Or for those less God-inclined: Where is Love in this? I find this question really helpful. Sometimes it’s a lament, but more often it’s like one of those “Where’s Waldo?” puzzles that were big a couple decades ago, where the question invites you to stop and look at the easy-to-miss
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There’s a lot of power in shredding your past. As a convert to Catholicism, I was not initially a big fan of the sacrament of reconciliation (or confession, as it’s generally known). I was a firm believer that you didn’t have to confess your sins to another person, since you could always confess them directly
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Why did Jesus appear to the women first after his Resurrection? John 20 has the beautiful story of the resurrected Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, who at first mistakes him for a gardener. This comes after she discovers the empty tomb, and John awkwardly inserts a story of John beating Peter to the tomb in
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Who decides what is too little, too late? I was on a conference call today where someone said one of the more honest things I’ve heard lately on a call like this. She prefaced a question with “I’m sorry, I was multi-tasking, so I didn’t catch what you said…” That is as close to “I
Reading Francis 