Tag: suffering
Life is good (aside from all the crap)
Theodicy is the discipline that seeks to understand the reason for so much suffering in the world. To say that human life is often tragic and filled with loss, pain and mourning is so obvious that it need not be said. Yet lots of paper is spent on seeking to understand this reality. There are… Read More ›
Pope targets worldly Church as biggest threat
Vatican City, Apr 30, 2013 / 06:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The “greatest danger” for the Church is if it becomes worldly, since this prevents her from communicating the message of the Cross, Pope Francis said. “When the Church becomes worldly, when she has the spirit of the world within herself … it is a weak… Read More ›
A fact of life
A fact of life People will often say that it is not death they fear, but the actual process of dying. I think that may be true for most people. For after all, you’re alive, and then the next moment your dead, the dying process however can actually takes decades for many. Aging is a… Read More ›
Pain and mercy
Pain and mercy I often wonder why it is so easy to write about pain, sorrow, struggle, and strife. I know that there is much of the above in the world, and I would suppose most of us, if perhaps not all, are often part of this drama, that makes up the pain of the… Read More ›
Take up your cross and follow Me
It is not only remarkable but astonishing that all during the tortures of the scourging, crowning with thorns, and the carrying of His cross, no word of complaint or resentment fell from Our Lord’s lips, no frown was seen on His sad but holy face. Surely He was “as a sheep being led to the… Read More ›
His incarnation was absolutely real
The evening before our Lord gave himself up to death he shared his own body with his Apostles and offered them his blood, with the command that they were to do what he had done in order to keep the memory of his Passion alive. Then a strange thing happened. Earlier Jesus had charged his… Read More ›
Real love is stronger than death
The Apostles could not watch one hour with their suffering Lord. Their spirit was good, but their flesh was weak. For this reason He seemed to condone their failure to keep Him company. How like to them we often are! We find it so hard to keep our minds on our few brief prayers, to… Read More ›
The connection
Waiting can be exhausting. In care-giving when the end of the journey is in sight, there is a connection with the patient that intensifies. It has nothing to do with the actual work in caring for them. It is deeper, a connection that is forged from possibly years of interaction. In caring for others there… Read More ›
Parental pain
Last Sunday Tom came up to me and gave me a note. It was from a woman who wanted to speak to me about the loss of her son. From the note I learned that he was only 33 years old and died from cancer. So I started over to the retreat house praying that… Read More ›
The truth that many people never understand
Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the… Read More ›