Suffering and the measure of the world
I was deeply impressed by the answer a fellow priest gave recently to a question that I ponder frequently. When asked to name one unifying cause for the troubles that plague us as American Catholics, he simply said, “I think we try to avoid suffering at any cost.”
The mystery of your priestly sacrifices
No easy interpretation of Genesis 22 exists. The account of God’s test of Abraham is truly awe-ful. It gives us no psychological insights into the heart of Abraham or Isaac, and the sparse narrative details — the three days’ journey, the binding of Isaac upon the altar, the dramatic angelic intervention to stay Abraham’s knife — are terrifying in their raw simplicity. Yet these verses offer wondrous cause for meditation on the mystery of sacrifice.
Notes on faith, love, and hope
St. Paul seems to have defined the triad we know today as the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love.
Musings on dignity and profane language
Profane and profanity are English words commonly used in reference to swearing, cursing, and hurling abusive language at someone. That’s an intriguing development from their Latin roots! A fanum is a temple or a sanctuary; attach the preposition pro to it, and you get “before/in front of/ outside the temple.”
Language that is not fitting to be heard in the presence of the divine, therefore, is unholy, not sacred: literally, profane.
Adoration always personal and communal
The current Eucharistic Revival in the United States is generating a discussion of the role of Eucharistic Adoration in the life of the Church.