jesus
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Who’s next? I’ve been working on surrendering, the Lenten discipline that I did not ask for, with mixed success. On the one hand, I am learning that the Christian life is largely a series of invitations to surrender – to surrender the illusion that you can control … much of anything; to surrender the idea…
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It’s going to be OK. It was the election of Pope Francis that got me into all this. In March 2013, I was in the back of a taxi in Washington, DC, when I heard the announcement that Jorge Bergoglio had been elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI. At that point, I had been Catholic…
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Where are you this Holy Week? For those of you who are Catholic, Holy Week – starting with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter – includes a LOT of listening to Bible stories. Especially if you participate in the Triduum – marked by the services on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on…
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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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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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You first. Starting with yesterday’s Gospel, the readings for daily mass have some challenging things to say about how we Christians ought to act. Yesterday, we heard: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” And: “Give to everyone who asks of…
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OK, so, when you’re too sick to go to any of the Christmas masses, part of the makeup assignment is to read the readings for all the variations of masses – Christmas Eve vigil, Christmas mass during the night, Christmas mass at dawn (which probably isn’t too crowded), Christmas mass during the day. It’s not…
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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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In Luke 21 (which is the Gospel for the first week of Advent this year), Jesus warns his followers about a final judgment day, saying, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.” Of course,…
Reading Francis 