god

  • To Forgive, Divine

    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.

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  • How God Sees Things

    The Bible readings that Catholics use at Mass this week are an interesting mix that, taken together, seem to underscore that God sees things very differently than the culture around us  does. There’s a passage from Paul’s first letter to Timothy that actually shows up twice, in the Monday daily Mass and then again this

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  • All the Things

    Last Sunday’s Old Testament passage from Deuteronomy was a beautiful passage from Moses on how the law of God is written on our hearts, and the Gospel was the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so my guess is that nobody paid much attention to the second reading, Colossians 1:15-20. But Paul says something interesting in

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  • Trinity Sunday

    So what? Last Sunday was the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity for Catholics – basically there’s a lineup of deep-topic feast days on Sundays from Ascension to Pentecost to Trinity Sunday to Corpus Christi that celebrate different important but hard to grasp theological concepts. If you are the type that thinks that faith is

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  • Millstones

    Millstones

    I’m glad I’m not a Catholic bishop in the US. In the Gospels, Jesus saves his harshest words for religious leaders that lead their followers astray. I think especially of Matthew 18, where, after saying that his followers should humble themselves like a little child, he says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who

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  • Reconciling

    A couple quick things about the readings chosen by the Church for the 4th Sunday of Lent (which was today).  The Gospel is the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15, one of the most famous stories Jesus tells. It’s worth noting (I think I heard Luke Johnson say this) that the context for

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  • Canticle of Lent

    Canticle of Lent

    Altissimu, omnipotente bon Signore, Tue so le laude, la gloria e l’honore et onne benedictione. One year I tried to give up impatient driving for Lent. That didn’t go so great. Count me among those who can’t wait for autonomous vehicles to replace all the other drivers on the road. Ad Te solo, Altissimo, se

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  • St. Thomas Aquinas

    Today the Catholic Church celebrates St. Thomas Aquinas, a 13th century Domincan priest and maybe the smartest Christian ever. His work brought together Christian theology and classical Greek philosophy in ways that show that faith and reason are not oppositional. In fact, for Aquinas the two perfect each other.  Three quick things about Aquinas worth

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  • Stage 5 God

    Stage 5 God

    We have a Stage 5 God, a Stage 4 Church, and too many Stage 3 leaders. One of my favorite books on leadership is Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright. Their approach presupposes that people are social in nature, that workplaces are essentially tribes (or tribes of tribes, if they’re big

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