To enter the kingdom of God we must endure many tribulations. If there are many persecutions, there are many testings; where there are many crowns of victory, there are many trials of strength. It is then to your advantage if there are many persecutors; among many persecutions you may more easily find a path to[…]
Month: January 2020
Sacred Art on the Second Sunday
Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (Jn. 1:29). ⧾ This declaration made by John the Baptist and which we hear before the reception of Holy Communion at every Mass, is a succinct summary of the mission of the Messiah and the mission of the Church. As we[…]
Prayer for Christian Unity by Pope John Paul II
(What follows is a prayer penned by Pope Saint John Paul II, which goes along with his longer meditation on unity between Catholics and what we might call the ‘Christian diaspora’, those corporate bodies that have drifted from the one, true Faith, see his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint) To Our Lady for Christian Unity[…]
Catholic and Christian Unity
Today, the 19th of January and the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, marks the beginning of the Church unity octave, a week of prayer for the reunion of Christians—Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic. One doesn’t hear much about Church unity these days. I believe the reason for a decrease in interest is the fact that the[…]
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Tolkien’s Legacy
The death of Christopher Tolkien as a nonagenarian ends a legacy, for it was this youngest son of the great J.R.R. that took – pardonnez le pun – good care of his father’s inimitable work. And imitated it has been, many, many times over, all to paler effect. For unlike the fantasy genre to which[…]
Thoughts on a Frigid Morn
It is minus 38 or so in Edmonton, without wind chill, too cold even for the penguins in their zoo; they have multiple feet of snow in Vancouver; minus twentysomething here where I write. The glaciers are doing quite fine. But global warming, global cooling, climate change, continues, and Greta’s gettin’ angrier. Anon, on to[…]
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Agape Love
Theresa of Avila wrote that “love is like a perfume-filled room.” Could it be that we can only describe such an ineffable concept using symbol and metaphor? It is often said that God is love. Indeed, the seemingly most straightforward answer we have to the question of what is God is found in 1 John[…]