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One down, 39,136 to go — the explorers who walk every street in their city…
There’s no better way to soothe the soul – and get to know a town – than striding through its streets. In my 20s, heartbroken after getting dumped, all I could do was march with the tide of London’s rush hour until the city grew quiet and dark, and I was too exhausted to feel in shock any more. A little lost in my early 30s, I spent a six-week cat-sitting stint in New York compulsively plodding around Brooklyn and Manhattan listening to Townes Van Zandt. It was a strange and lonely time, but moving through an endless montage of concentrated history and humanity felt beautiful and instructive. The pandemic has sharpened a collective appreciation of wandering our cities with fresh eyes, exploring the streets we shunned in the pre-lockdown days, when walking was merely about hurrying from A t...
11 things you should know about Charles de Foucauld…
The martyred priest lived among the Tuareg people in the Algerian desert and brought the Gospel to Muslim lands. Blessed Charles de Foucauld will be canonized on May 15. Here are interesting facts about his holy and interesting life in the footsteps of Christ. 1. He was beatified by Benedict XVI in 2005. 2. Charles is mostly known for having lived as a hermit among the Tuareg people in the Sahara. He translated the Gospel in the Tuareg language and published the first bilingual Tuareg-French dictionary. He also reproduced thousands of lines of Tuareg poetry about their ancestral habits. These research works continue to have scientific value today. 3. His missionary zeal cost him his life. On Dec. 1, 1916, Brother Charles of Jesus was assassinated by an armed tribal group connected wi...
7 things you should know about St. Titus Brandsma…
The journalist, mystic and saint is a fitting patron for the blogosphere. 1. The miracle for his canonization involved a fellow Carmelite. When Florida Carmelite Father Michael Driscoll received a diagnosis of stage-4 melanoma in 2004, he knew where to turn: He began praying for the intercession of Blessed Titus Brandsma, who had been martyred in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. A fellow priest gave Father Driscoll a second-class relic, a patch of black cloth from Brandsma’s tunic, which Father Driscoll held against his forehead each day as he prayed for healing. Father Driscoll had already undergone numerous surgeries to remove smaller skin cancers from his face, but this time, the cancer was widespread. Surgeons removed an advanced metastatic melanoma from his head and neck, as wel...
Our Lord left us a legacy of His love. Lay hold of this treasure and let it transform your life…..
The title of this sermon uses the word legacy, which refers to something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor. Perhaps the most accessible image of this is money. If I receive 100 million dollars from a dying relative, I can the money to start living differently. My bills, which now seem overwhelming, can be paid with just the interest earned from my newfound wealth. I can start enjoying things I thought I could never afford in the past. In other words, a legacy can completely change the way I live and open up new possibilities. It is in this sense that we explore today’s Gospel, wherein our Lord sets forth for us a new power: the power of love. If we tap into it and draw from its riches, we are able to live differently. If we will but lay hold of it, there is a kind ...
In First Canonization Ceremony Since 2019, Pope Francis Raises 10 New Saints to the Altars…
The new saints are: -Charles de Foucauld: A French soldier and explorer who became a Trappist monk and Catholic missionary to Muslims in Algeria. Known as Brother Charles of Jesus, he was killed in 1916 at the age of 58. -Titus Brandsma: A Dutch priest, professor, and journalist who opposed Nazi propaganda in Catholic newspapers. He was killed by lethal injection in Dachau in 1942. -Devasahayam Pillai: A layman from India who was tortured and martyred after converting from Hinduism to Catholicism in the 18th century. More in Vatican -Marie Rivier: The founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation. The Frenchwoman founded the order in 1796, at the age of 28, during the Reign of Terror. -Maria Francesca of Jesus: A 19th-century missionary founder who crossed the Atlantic Oce...
An imaginary second draft of Pope Francis’ speech on the Mass…
This past weekend, Pope Francis gave a speech where he stated: It is true that every reform creates resistance. I remember, when I was a boy, when Pius XII began with the first liturgical reform, the first one: you can drink water before communion, fasting for an hour… “But that’s against the sanctity of the Eucharist!”, they rent their garments in despair. Then, the Vespers Mass: “But, how come, Mass is in the morning!”. Then, the reform of the Easter Triduum: “But how is it possible, on Saturday the Lord must rise, now they postpone it to Sunday, to Saturday evening, on Sunday they don’t ring the bells… And where do the twelve prophecies go?”. All these things scandalized closed minds. It also happens today. Indeed, these closed mindsets use liturgical matters to defend their...
This Sunday, don’t fall for good feelings. Only real love will ‘make all things new’…
Jesus gives us a new commandment this Sunday, the Fifth Sunday of Easter Year C, but it is easy to get this new commandment wrong “Love one another as I have loved you,” he says. We imagine this means “Have a big heart that embraces mankind.” In fact, though, it means, “Don’t trust your feelings. Stop pleasing yourself with evil. Stand up for truth and goodness, even if it hurts — even if it means losing friends.” In John, Sunday’s Gospel reading is sandwiched between two painful passages. It is the night before his death. Jesus washes his apostles’ feet — 12 apostles, 24 feet. Then he announces that one of them will betray him. It turns out to be Judas, who promptly walks out, dirtying the feet his best friend and Lord just cleaned. It is only then that Jesus says what we hear today — “No...
Catholic University Awards Honorary Degree to Imprisoned Human Rights Advocate Jimmy Lai…
[embedded content] A devout Catholic and media magnate, Jimmy Lai, 74, has been arrested numerous times for his pro-democracy activism and is awaiting trial on sedition charges related to the stringent national security law the China’s communist government imposed on Hong Kong in July 2020. Most recently he was sentenced in December 2021 to 13 months in prison on a charge of unlawful assembly, stemming from his participation in an annual vigil commemorating the 1989 crackdown of pro-democracy demonstrators at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Authorities in Hong Kong also have shuttered Lai’s influential Hong Kong newspaper, Apple Daily. Under the new security law, a person who is convicted of secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces will receive a minimum of 10 ye...
The fall of Roe v. Wade would right a terrible wrong — pray that God’s healing graces will wash over this land…..
Ever since a draft copy of the Supreme Court decision regarding abortion has been leaked, social media has been awash with arguments and testimonies from both sides. It seems to me this is good for the pro-life movement. Whatever the political ramifications of the leaking of the possible Supreme Court decision about abortion, it presents an opportunity to try to educate the public about precisely what an abortion is; and, perhaps even more importantly, it is an opportunity to reach out to those who have had abortions and facilitated abortions. Pro-aborts have been whining and threatening and appear to have a bloodthirst about them that is most off-putting. Their arguments will certainly fortify those who are pro-abortion, but I suspect they will persuade...
Christ crucified in the modern world: The priest as sacrificial witness…
The evils of the 20th century hold a strange fascination. We cannot help but read and reread accounts of totalitarian oppression, such as Elie Wiesel’s Night, Anne Frank’s Diary, Viktor Frankl’s profound Man’s Search for Meaning, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Something about these experiences, primarily relating to the horrors of Naziism and Communism, speaks deeply to the resiliency of the human spirit that cannot be crushed even by the most brutal regimes. I also think we’re captivated by the brutality of those regimes because they epitomize in extreme form the inhumanity of our society, subject to the mass manipulation of our technologically saturated culture. They remind us that we live in an ever more dystopian world. Catholics have their own heroic accounts of perse...
A Catholic journalist is being canonized this weekend — Titus Brandsma, a new patron saint for Catholic journalism…
ROME. As of May 15, Catholic journalists around the world will be able to count one of their number among the saints, as Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite killed at the Dachau concentration camp in 1942, is canonized in St. Peter’s Square. At a moment when Catholic opinion journalism is in danger of falling victim to the ever-present dangers of trivialization, tribalism and hysteria-mongering in this age of Internet and social media demagogy, St. Titus Brandsma’s example of courage and fidelity under great pressure is well worth pondering. Anno Sjoerd Brandsma was born in the Dutch province of Friesland in 1881 to devoutly Catholic parents in what was then a dominantly Protestant area. At 17, young Anno entered the Carmelite novitiate at Boxmeer on the River Meuse, taking the religious nam...
The President’s recent remarks about abortion were a new low for Joe…
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: The president’s recent remarks on abortion after the leaked Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health were blatantly false. In the wake of the unconscionable leaking of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the response from pro-abortion-rights politicians and their supporters has been deplorable. President Joe Biden’s words and actions have been particularly disturbing, given the office that our nation’s so-called “devout Catholic” president occupies and his frequent public claims to be deeply engaged with his Catholic faith. Biden reaffirmed the primacy of his pro-abortion credentials in an initial White House statement released the morning after Politico published Alito’s draft. Instead ...
