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in this new place with old relationships – will you find meaning here
How do you write new words, find new meaning, when the landscape becomes familiar? How do you find freshness? How does your heart remain awake? What happens when what was once strange is no longer strange? What do we do when strange becomes a new normal? Does strange lose its meaning? Does meaning become strange? What grounded us before? What grounds us now? The answers to these questions become clear just when we feel the old patterns, once so familiar, slip away. By choice or not, the old patterns are removed and we develop new rhythms. What we once knew slipping into memory. How much can memory hold? The days feel stretched out, unhurried. Yet I am distracted. Busy and not busy. My heart is often open–but also, sometimes, numb. But the days fly by. How do the days...
Turn from your sins and return to the Lord — this is the Kairos of Confession!…
Detail of Annibale Carracci’s Domine Quo Vadis? (Christ Appearing to Saint Peter on the Appian Way), 1601–1602 Msgr. Charles Pope “Receive the Holy Spirit,” said the risen Lord to his apostles. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The sacrament of Penance, instituted by Christ himself, is one of the greatest gifts of Divine Mercy, but it is widely neglected. To help rekindle a new appreciation for such a profound gift of Divine Mercy, the Register presents this special section. Blow the trumpet in Zion! … Even now, says the LORD; return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God (Joel 2:1,12-13). When the Lenten season open...
Sacrifice and mercy: The spiritual mission of St. Faustina…
Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska died at the age of 33 in 1938, misunderstood by most of the religious sisters with whom she had lived her life. They appreciated her kindness, hard work, and faithfulness to their rule of life, but many of her fellow religious also thought that she was delusional and tormented. Indeed, she claimed to have received several revelations from the Lord, sometimes involving direct commands, all of which concerned his divine mercy. She believed that she was entrusted with the mission of making the Lord’s mercy known. Through living a life of sacrificial love for the Lord, the absurdity of Sr. Faustina’s claim has become an occasion of hope for the world. To accomplish this mission, she was humbly faithful to the promptings of the Lord even in t...
One year later, Sri Lanka stops to remember 280 victims of Easter Sunday 2019 church bombings…
The bombings left some 280 people dead and nearly 600 wounded. Card Ranjith thanks all those helping victims’ families, urges the government to find the culprits. The commemoration took place amid the pandemic crisis. Colombo (AsiaNews) – One year after the tragedy, Sri Lanka came to stop today to remember the victims of the bomb attacks against three churches – two Catholic and one Protestant – and three hotels on Easter Sunday 2019. The explosions left some 280 people dead, including 45 foreigners, and nearly 600 wounded. In a video message carried on Verbum Catholic TV, Archbishop Card Malcom Ranjith of Colombo thanked all those who showed respect to the victims and expressed solidarity with them and their families. The cardinal also called for those in office a year ago to pay for thei...
When You Feel Weak, Choose to Adore God
Accept your weakness and brokenness, beloved; let them open your heart to Me. You can be fully yourself with Me… Whenever you’re feeling weak and wounded, come confidently into My Presence to receive abundant Love and Peace.Jesus Always, September 23 This morning I ran the same stretch of road I’ve run several times for years. My feet know the path by heart—same country road, the same dog discovering me anew every morning, and the same state route. No mile marker had changed … but everything had changed. The state route that once signaled the inertia of American culture—caffeinated drivers riding the bumper of the car in front of them, distracted with the 8 hours ahead of them or their phone on the dash—felt like a back-country road. Five cars passed me on my half-mile stretch. I he...
No matter how long it’s been, go to Confession! God dwelt within you at your Baptism, and he wishes to dwell within you again…..
If you are in the state of sanctifying grace, you and God are friends. The whole world finds itself in a frantic search for a defense against Covid-19. Some recommend such preventative “medicine” as exercise, rest, nutrition, hydration, fresh air, sunlight, vitamins and minerals. Others suggest masks and gloves. Some say hydroxychloroquine is the answer. (Though some physicians are so convinced that hydroxychloroquine is effective against Covid-19 that they are going beyond FDA regulations to prescribe it, many media personalities insist that hydroxychloroquine is not effective — using the powerful logic that Donald Trump suggested that it might be). Though the response to Covid-19 has brought out the worst in some people, it has nevertheless illustrated a basic truth: people want to live....
‘Some Good News’ from John Krasinki (Episode 4) — with weather reporter Brad Pitt…
[embedded content] John Krasinski highlights some good news around the world (including weather from Brad Pitt), has NASA astronauts from the International Space Station stop by, and invites you to relive #SGNProm with special guests Billie Eilish, Jonas Brothers, Chance the Rapper, and Rainn Wilson.
Nosferatu, the Spanish Flu and Our Lady of Fatima…
The depiction in Nosferatu of the upending of a settled way of life by contagion has more than a contemporary resonance. At the center of the 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror are scenes of a plague, which has been visited upon a hitherto prosperous and relatively happy German community. The bringers of that plague are the rats that accompany the vampire Count Orlok from his lair in Transylvania. Soon, everyday life in the fictional town of Wisborg is transformed by a never-ending parade of coffin-bearers led by frock-coated and solemn-faced undertakers. Today, a mysterious disease has visited us. Therefore, the depiction in Nosferatu of the upending of a settled way of life by contagion has more than a contemporary resonance. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is the earliest cinemat...
Dealing with Anxiety
www.courtnayerichard.com Have you ever felt anxious? Are you there now? Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or uneasiness, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Does that sound or feel familiar to you right now? Anxiety can feel unsettling and scary. It’s actually very closely related to fear and escalated distress. Years ago, I used to get panic attacks often. They would come on all of a sudden. I would experience a strong sense of anxiety and start hyperventilating. It often made me feel like I was about to have a heart attack (and I didn’t know 100% why?). I’ll never forget one night, I had an immediate panic attack. I asked my husband to bring me to the Emergency Room right away! Well, as soon as we walked through the doors of...
Staying Calm in the Midst of a Storm
As a child, my family and I would travel to Emerald Isle, NC, every summer. It was the highlight of my year. We would walk to the beach every day, buggy board, and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the sand. My family and I have made some wonderful and life long memories at Emerald Isle. One summer, however, there was a massive storm at night. It started as a regular thunderstorm, but we soon realized something was different when we felt our rental house swaying side to side. There was lightning and thundering, and waves crashing. Like most beach houses, this one was built on stilts, so it was high up. This allowed the house to move and give way to high winds like we experienced this particular night. Still, this beach house could only take so much. I looked over at my cousin, who ...
Your need for mercy is greater than you could ever imagine. Think about what Christ has done, and be grateful and astonished…..
In the afterglow of Divine Mercy Sunday it seems opportune to make a few observations about the glorious mercy of our Lord. As a prelude we ought to set aside some mistaken notions of mercy. We live in times in which mercy, like so many other things, has become a detached concept in people’s minds,separated from the things that really help us to understand it. For indeed, mercy makes sense and is necessary because we are sinners in desperate shape. Yet many today think it unkind and unmerciful to speak of sin and to refer to people sinners. Many think that mercy is a declaration that God doesn’t really care about sin, or that sin is not a relevant concept. Too many conceive of mercy as God’s approval of what they are doing. But of course, if God did approve of everything we do, including o...
The joy of Easter: Singing and living like Christ is alive…
Even if know that Easter is the most important feast of the liturgical year, Christmas still seems like a much bigger deal. Christmas is known for its cheer–singing, treats, presents, fires, and family–but we’re not quite sure how to celebrate Easter. Pascha (the feast’s Latin name) focuses like the original Passover on being spared of death and beginning a new life. The feast happens in Spring (where the word Easter comes from) as a natural sign that we should begin again. All the penances of Lent should culminate in deep joy, not in going back to our old ways, but in living with a new freedom. It’s a deeper joy than Christmas, even if we don’t have the customs to express it any longer. I filmed a virtual theology on tap talk this last week focused on Easter shows us that God is not dead ...
