Tag: meaning
Receiving Gifts
The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We… Read More ›
Americans More Comfortable With Profanity Than Christ
A cartoon has circulated depicting three children sitting outside their school principal’s office. The first child says, “I said the ‘S-H’ word.” The second, “I said the ‘F’ word.” And then the third, “I said ‘Christmas.’” While some may sigh and shake their heads at this cartoon, the reality is even worse, says religion and… Read More ›
Discover your deep self, in Christ
. . .it is precisely because it is public in the classical or “political” sense of the word, that the liturgy enables us to discover and to express the deepest meaning of Christian personalism. We must first emerge from the private realm, the “household” which is the realm of necessity and the proper domain of… Read More ›
A meditation on the mystery of time
I began our New Years Eve Late Night Mass (Which begins at 11:15 PM) with the observation that we begin this Mass in one year, and end in another. New Years Eve features the mysterious passage from one year to another. In a way I suppose it is no more mysterious than the passage from… Read More ›
Everyman (a book review of sorts)
Fiction is a very important genre of literature. People have told me in the past that they don’t read fiction, because it does not deal with life. When in fact the opposite is true, for to read fiction is to learn about life, to think deeply on many areas of existence, that may not be… Read More ›
Common to the point of blandness
I was reading yesterday, a book written by a Priest about the NDE experience and the Christian path. I won’t go into the book, but as I was reading it, the reality of my being in the latter part of my life was very strong. It does not matter that I ‘may’ have thirty years… Read More ›
Deeper into hope
Deeper into hope Christ Jesus body lay in darkness, surrounded by the cold and nothingness of death. Its grip hard and heavy; seeking to bring Jesus into death’s kingdom, the cessation of hope, love, warmth and true life, is death’s scepter, despair all it has to offer. So now it is a period of waiting,… Read More ›
A trusting abandonment to Christ
. . .God has revealed that his love for man, for each one of us, is boundless: on the Cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God made man, shows us in the clearest possible way how far this love reaches, even to the gift of himself, even to the supreme sacrifice. With the mystery… Read More ›
An existence that is meaningless and futile
In our society, a society of business rooted in Puritanism, based on a pseudo-ethic of industriousness and thrift to be rewarded by comfort, pleasure, and a good bank account, the myth of work is thought to justify an existence that is essentially meaningless and futile. There is, then, a great deal of busyness as people… Read More ›
What we truly believe?
I had lunch with a friend yesterday and he was talking about taking a trip, something he has discussed with me quite a few times. He is a few months older than me, he is 64 years old. I brought up the fact that, perhaps too bluntly, that he was running out of time, and… Read More ›