Yes, he said, he did have a regret, a major one: “If I had my priesthood to do over again, I would be easier on people the next time. I wouldn’t be so stingy with God’s mercy, with the sacraments, and with forgiveness. You see what was drilled into me in my formation was the phrase, The truth will set you free, and I believed that it was my responsibility to challenge people to protect that. That’s good, but...
The term reconciliation offers a splendid insight into our relational character as humans. Reconciliation always presupposes a preceding relational rupture. It is well known that contemporary philosophical reflection, thanks above all to personalism, has widely re-evaluated the notion of relationship, putting it in connection with that of identity and thus making a decisive contribution to overcoming interpretations of identity uncritically based on modern individualism and subjectivism, which understandably struggled to account for the anthropological relevance of reconciliation.
All three European powers, Netherland, Portugal and Britain, traded with coastal and inland African populations who sold them human beings, often captives in war. Approximately 18 million Africans were taken from Africa between 1500 and 1900, but only 11 million crossed the Atlantic; others were taken across the Sahara to North Africa and the Middle East or across the Indian Ocean to slave markets in southwest Asia.
There comes a time in life when it’s time to stop writing your resume and begin to write your obituary. I’m not sure who first coined that line, but there’s wisdom in it. What’s the difference between a resume and an obituary? Well, the former details your achievements, the latter expresses how you want to be remembered and what kind of oxygen and blessing you want to leave behind.
Recently I received a letter from a friend who shared that she was afraid to accept a certain vocation because it would leave her too much alone. She shared this fear with her spiritual director who simply said, “Charles de Foucauld died alone in the desert!” That answer was enough for her. She went ahead with it. Is that answer enough for those of us who have the same hesitancy, the fear of being alone?
“The cock will crow at the breaking of your own ego – there are lots of ways to wake up!” John Shea gave me those words and I understood them a little better recently as I stood in line at an airport: I had checked in for a flight, approached security, saw a huge lineup, and accepted the fact that it would take at least 40 minutes to get through it.
China has accomplished much in recent decades with huge social, economic and political transformations. However, the challenges faced by the local Catholic Church are not vanishing. All kinds of difficulties continue to constrain the growth of the Chinese Catholic Church, forcing it to adapt its own framework and to produce new responses
Nothing is as important as forgiveness. It is the key to happiness and the most important spiritual imperative in our lives. We need to forgive, to make peace with the hurts and injustices we have suffered so as not to die angry and bitter. Before we die, we need to forgive – others, ourselves, and God, for what happened to us in this life.
The Bible presents a universalistic vision of God and the world. The strength of its universalism has made it the most translated, most widely read book of all time. The main factors in its spread are the Jewish diaspora and the Christian missions around the world. The universalism of the Bible is reflected in the expansion of the Christian Churches, of which it is the founding document. Today there is an interreligious and ecumenical scholarly community that studies and spreads the Bible.
A wise old Augustinian priest once shared this in class. There are days in my life when everything from the pressures of my work, to tiredness, to depression, to distraction, to flat-out laziness make it difficult for me to pray. But, no matter what, I always try to pray at least one sincere, focused Our Father every day.
The polyvalence of the term “culture” reflects the wealth of meanings of the Latin verb colere: among them, to cultivate a field, to care for or adorn one’s body, to protect, to inhabit, to practice a virtue or study, to honor, to serve with a cult a certain god or a sanctuary. Hence there is the close relationship in Latin languages of words relating to agriculture, culture (customs and knowledge) and cult (religious or civic).
Henri Nouwen once suggested that if you want to understand the tragedy of the Second World War, you can read a hundred history books about it and watch a thousand hours of video documentaries on it, or you can read the Diary of Anne Frank. In that single memoir of young girl imprisoned and later executed by the Nazis you will see, first-hand, the tragedy of war and what war does to the human soul.
Among the managers of the Catholic part of the Church, there are not a few who seem determined to drive away anyone who looks anew at old moral positions (especially those related to sex). Those new thinkers generally believe that Christianity is not about morality, but is a living and growing relationship with God in Jesus Christ that is the foundation and norm for morality.
At the end of the day, all of us, believers and non-believers, pious and impious, share one common humanity and all end up on the same road. This has many implications. It’s no secret that today religious practice is plummetingradically everywhere in the secular world. Those who are opting out don’t all look the same, nor go by the same name.
In a particularly poignant passage in her poem, The Leaf and the Cloud, Mary Oliver pictures herself standing at the gravesite of her mother and father, reflecting on their lives. They were far from perfect and she doesn’t sugarcoat their faults. She openly names her mother’s heaviness of soul and her father’s immature faith. She knows that many of her own struggles have roots there.
After his first arrest, the peace activist Daniel Berrigan went into hiding. After four months, he was captured, but during those months underground, although a threat to no one, he was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. There’s an irony here that did not go unnoticed. Someone put up a poster of him with this caption: Wanted – Notorious consecrator of bread and wine.
Satan (the accuser), the devil (the divider), the evil one, the serpent, the dragon, the demon, etc. There is also the name “Lucifer,” meaning “bearer of light.” Originally this was a name of Christ, but over the centuries has become the r name of the angel who rebelled against God out of pride. This malign presence is recognized as having its own will and freedom, and therefore the dignity of an intelligent creature, of a “person.”
The Belgian theologian Jan Walgrave, who directed my doctoral thesis, was a true intellectual and a rare one. True, in that his thought naturally, instinctually gravitated towards the huge philosophical questions of essence and existence. Why are we here? Who are we really?
