Interfaith

On Ash Wednesday, it’s standing room only at our church – with IU students! The St. Paul Catholic Center offered five – yes, five – Masses with Ash Wednesday services, all jam-packed!  And lines three deep against the back wall! Something’s going on.

Solemnity, Annunciation of the Lord … the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child…

Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary  Feria IV, Passion Week. Dixit autem María: Ecce ancílla Dómini, fiat mihi secúndum verbum tuum.

Pentecost, (Novus Ordo) Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Pentecost Sunday (Tridentine Latin Mass) Veni, Sancte Spíritus, et emítte cǽlitus lucis tuæ rádium.

Fifth Sunday of Advent (Novus Ordo)
Master, the one you love is ill… This illness is not to end in death…
Passion Sunday (Tridentine Latin Mass)
Do me justice, O God, and fight my fight against a faithless people…

On the Danger to which Tepidity Exposes the Soul  “But Jesus hid himself.” John, 8:59.   He enlightens all; but he cannot enlighten those who voluntarily shut their eyes to the light; from them the Saviour hides himself…

First Sunday of Lent, (Novus Ordo, Year A)
The LORD God formed man .. so man became a living being…
I Sunday of Lent,  (Tridentine Latin Mass)
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will deliver him and glorify him; with length of days I will gratify him.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the spiritual combat of Lent. Dom Prosper Guéranger notes we face two enemies, internal passions and external devils, both from our pride and refusal to obey God. God forgave him his sin, but He punished him.

Ash Wedneday (Novus Ordo, Year A)  …Rend your hearts, not your garments… return to the LORD, your God

Ash Wednesday (Tridentine Latin Mass) … thou hast mercy upon all… and overlookest the sins of men for the sake of repentance.

No sports season has been more thrilling than this IU football team’s perfect 16-0 record…  until one brutal hit left its star quarterback lying face down in the grass, his condition unknown.. and all the euphoria popped, like a soap bubble…  revealing the hidden ugly truth of tackle football…

He was a very old man … in his late 70s… absorbed in one of the simplest tasks on earth …but his movement had a dignity that I do not remember seeing in the city with its more important tasks.

Below us was a crowd, men in business suits pressed together… the desire in those eyes and hands, each one searching for the feel, the touch, the connection with the force we call truth, as if through the shake of a hand, that which Sam Ervin had done could run into their bodies and erase their sins…

Was she a hundred now.… One hundred?… How could that be…  in the bathroom, with her glasses still on… her eyes cleared… a face flashed in the mirror, this shriveled head of some strange old lady… is that me?

I was standing on the white deck around the blue pool, shielding my eyes from the sun… Her face was too close, staring at me through her black sunglasses, my bare feet burning on the cement deck. Behind me, a distracting set of two parallel walls encircled us and the pool area like a corral…

First Sunday of Advent (Novus Ordo, Year A) …before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage…
I Sunday of Advent (Tridentine Latin Mass) To You I lift up my soul: in You, O my God, I trust; let me not be put to shame;

On the General Judgment  “And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven with much power and majesty.” Matt. xxiv. 30.

… if such a massacre had taken place in a Jewish town.. Israel would have risen to its feet… (but) Arab society is soaking in its own blood…

If Christianity is ever to have any credibility in the future, we are going to need many more gentle, persuasive and strong leaders to show a different way of being Christian than the shrill, cruel and politicized theocrats who dominate the news every day.

It’s a Sunday evening at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and the pews are full. Redeemer is a conservative Evangelical Christian congregation, but the parishioners don’t fit the easy Bible Belt stereotypes.

Dr. Leana S. Wen, the medical contributor to the Washington Post, lays out in detail the obvious reality: marijuana is profoundly destructive. Her article should be a wake-up call to all of us  – before it is too late.

This spiritual retreat in California helps ease the pains of mothers and grandmothers who have lost children before their natural time and find comfort and meaning in the process.

Greek, Roman classics don’t perpetuate a “Eurocentric  Western Canon” but teach inquiry, intellectual dialogue, say black Virginia teachers.

Turkish novelist Ahmet Altan was imprisoned on false charges in Turkey.  In prison, he wrote “I’m watching the Coronavirus virus unfold from a Turkish prison. This is why I’m hopeful.” – From the Washington Post, May 24,2020.

It’s early morning in the heart of Oakland’s Skid Row, and Steve F. is coming across the street toward me and Artie G., bouncing from leg to leg, waving at us with one hand and balancing a styrofoam plate with the other hand, grinning his maniac drug grin.

The underlying religious crisis is plain for all to see. In the Middle East conflict in 2014, only four powers are secular, and the other six claim to base their identities on their religions: Judaism, Islam, and behind the scenes, Christian Zionism.

LONDON, Dec. 7 - The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years.

Three days before President-Elect John F. Kennedy assumed the office of president in 1961, outgoing President Eisenhower reflected on his two terms and issued his memorable warning in a historic  televised Farewell Address.

The newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower gave his first public address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953. You may listen here.

We confuse not having peace with not being aware of the peace we possess. When… storm-tossed, we only perceive the storm… we have not lost our peace of soul, but only our awareness of it…