I don’t like to wait. Whether it’s at the doctor’s office, at a busy restaurant on a Saturday night, sitting in rush hour traffic, or waiting for water to boil when making pasta. Waiting is hard because it often causes stress, anxiety, confusion, sorrow, and even darkness.
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Holy Thursday always seems to trigger a host of memories from my childhood. I remember how we attended this evening’s Mass as a family, and afterwards how we would visit other neighboring churches. But I never fully understood what was going on and why we did these things.
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Lent is the time when we seek the Lord through prayer, by giving alms through service, and by practicing self-control through fasting. Each of us is called to a true inner conversion of heart as we try to follow God’s will more faithfully in our day-to-day lives. Read More
If you were to search the Internet for the word “paradox,” you would get a couple of different definitions: a paradox is when two things are both true, but the two things seem to contradict each other; or a paradox is a statement that may sound contradictory but upon further reflection, reveals a deeper spiritual truth through the comparison of their parts. Confused? Let me give you a few examples:
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There’s a story about a priest and his friend, a soap maker, who were out taking a walk. The soap maker said, “What good is religion? What good is Jesus? Look at all the trouble and misery in the world. People fight. People steal, People kill. People hate. After thousands of years of talking about goodness, truth, and peace – after all the prayers, homilies and teachings, things haven’t gotten any better.”
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The Epiphany of the Lord has always been a big deal in my household. This Christian feast is traditionally observed on January 6th – which also is my date of birth. Needless to say, I was not particularly thrilled when the church decided to move the observance of Epiphany to the first Sunday of January. Despite that move, I continue to celebrate the traditional Epiphany day on January 6th every year.
I believe that there are two types of people in this world: those who like surprises and those who don’t. I, for one, do not like surprises. And I think the reason why is that the surprise usually doesn’t end well for me. Let me give you a perfect example.
Since we just celebrated the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary yesterday, I thought that this would be an appropriate post.
“Imitating Christ does not mean living a life like Christ, but rather living your own life as authentically as Christ lived his.” ~Henri J.M. Nouwen
We’ve all seen it or heard it before. It could have been in a scripture passage, a spiritual book, a church hymn, or even in a preached homily at Mass. The message was this: each and every one of us should strive to imitate Jesus.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. No matter where we turn in life, there’s a decision that needs to be made. What should I do today? What do I wear? What book should I read? What do I want to be when I grow up? Should I exercise or binge watch some TV series? And on and on.
According to the people who know about this kind of stuff, adults make 35,000 decisions every day. Crazy, right? And 226.7 of these decisions are about food alone! What should I eat today? Do I pick it up or have it delivered? Do I stick to my diet or snarf-down that piece of chocolate cake? And on and on. Our lives are filled with decisions. Read More
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