Discover
Why did Our Lord wash the feet of His disciples? The Greek text of John 13 is enlightening…..
One of the unique features of the Holy Thursday liturgy is the remembrance of Jesus’ act of washing the disciples’ feet. My favorite depiction of this scene has always been the one above by Ford Madox Brown. I think it really captures Peter’s extreme discomfort at having his feet washed by Jesus. I must confess that I find Peter’s face, which depicts well his begrudging acceptance of the act, a bit humorous. But why was he so uncomfortable? Actually, there is a lot more going on here than it first may seem. Knowing the Greek here really helps. Indeed, had Peter fully realized what Jesus was calling him into, he might have protested even more than he did. Let me explain. The account is found in John 13: Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come that he wou...
What the Pope really said (or didn’t say) about the new coronavirus and nature …
Put a sock in it, Rick Moran. Rick Moran is PJ Media’s Chicago editor, and he recently opened a column titled Pope Says Virus Is Nature’s Response to the Climate Crisis by telling Pope Francis to “put a sock in it,” writing: Oh, put a sock in it, Francis. Pope Francis is certainly not letting a planetary crisis go to waste. He is trying to piggyback the religion of climate change on the back of the coronavirus pandemic. He then quoted an MSNNews story which made the claim that: Pope Francis has said the coronavirus pandemic is one of “nature’s responses” to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis. As it source, MSNNews cited an interview by Austen Ivereigh published in Commonweal and The Tablet on Wednesday, April 8th. Setting aside the crass way in which Moran addresses a major worl...
Team of young Chicago priests answer the call to anoint COVID-19 coronavirus patients…
Chicago, Ill., Apr 8, 2020 / 04:33 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Chicago has assembled a team of 24 priest volunteers— all under age 60, and without pre-existing medical conditions— to administer sacramental anointing of the sick to Catholics with COVID-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. Father Matthew O’Donnell, pastor of St. Columbanus Parish on the city’s South Side, has been a part of the team for about three weeks, and told CNA that so far he has anointed two people with COVID-19. “I know that all of us who are doing this ministry in Chicago right now are doing it because we believe that this is what we’re called to do as priests, to be present to people,” Fr. O’Donnell told CNA. “And I think all of us are knowledgeable of the risks, but the importance of the ...
Melbourne cathedral vandalized after Cardinal George Pell acquittal…
CNA Staff, Apr 8, 2020 / 03:02 pm (CNA).- St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne was vandalized overnight Wednesday, hours after Cardinal George Pell was acquitted by Australia’s High Court of a sexual abuse conviction and released from prison. The door to the cathedral was spray-painted with a cartoon image of a devil, along with the message “ROT IN HELL, PELL.” Other doors were daubed with upside-down crosses and the words “NO JUSTICE,” “PAEDO RAPIST,” and: “The law protects the powerful.” Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne told Australian media that while he was upset about the vandalism, he was “not entirely surprised.” “There remains such strong emotions around all of these matters,” Comensoli told Australian news network 3AW. Images taken of the cathedral showed ...
Each of us will taste death. Here are the 7 duties of dying Christians…..
We often speak of duties to the dying, but not so much the duties of the dying. Most material on dying is aimed at self-preference questions such as what you find on a Living Will. But shouldn’t our dying be as much about our duties to others as about our preferences? At least, this is what Jesus shows us in his dying: his concern for the spiritual and temporal welfare of everyone around him If it is true that “Christ … fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes 22), then not only does Jesus show us how to live, but also how to die. Christians should strive to emulate Jesus, not in the details of his dying, but in the pattern of his response. Jesus’ “seven last words” provide us with a simple way to enter into that response. Each “word” can be ...
There are more than 150 confirmed moons in our solar system. We ranked ’em all…..
NASA Around 4.5 billion years ago, our solar system was born from a violent cloud of gas and dust. That spinning disk of interstellar material formed comets, asteroids, the planets, and their moons. The first moon we discovered was, of course, our own. Next, the discovery of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto by Galileo Galilee in the 17th century restructured our understanding of the universe. “That’s the beginning of the scientific era, in my mind,” astronomer David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles tells Popular Mechanics. Over the years, we’ve constructed powerful telescopes and lofted endeavoring spacecraft toward the stars, cueing a slow trickle of fascinating lunar discoveries. According to NASA’s website, there are 214 moons in the solar system: 158 co...
Notre Dame Cathedral to broadcast Crown of Thorns veneration on Good Friday…
The Holy Crown of Thorns worn by Jesus Christ were presented for veneration every first Friday of each month prior to the Notre Dame fire on April 15, 2019. (Shutterstock) Archbishop Aupetit will lead a meditation on the Passion of Christ inside the cathedral in the apse behind Notre-Dame’s Pietà. Courtney Mares/CNA. PARIS, France — One year after the world watched the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris burn, the Archbishop of Paris will display the relic of Christ’s crown of thorns for veneration during a Good Friday broadcast. “When Mary is at the foot of the cross, she knows that from the most absolute evil God can always draw a much greater one,” Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris said in an online press conference on April 7. “I do not see any meaning in the cathedral fire or...
If we are in Christ, we have nothing to fear from the terrors of the world — including coronavirus…
Excerpt from Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the Postscript of the forthcoming book Hope to Die, which Scott Hahn wrote with Emily Stimpson Chapman. Hahn wrote this section specifically in response to the coronavirus crisis. It is reprinted with permission. Easter 2020 was always the scheduled release date for this book. Emily and I worked on it during the summer of 2019, finished our edits over Christmas, and on February 28, 2020, a week before the book was scheduled to go to press, filmed an episode about it for the television show Franciscan Presents. Then, days later, the coronavirus known as COVID-19 started spreading across the United States. And I stopped the presses. I’ve never done tha...
Practical advice from “the ghost of quarantine future”…
Belgians applaud and make noise to celebrate medical personnel dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2020. (Yves Herman/Reuters) Advice from Holly Taylor Coolman, a wife, mother, and theology professor, who’s been at it longer than most. I’ve seen more and more people remark on social media and elsewhere that this coronavirus shelter-in-place time is getting to them. It’s not just claustrophobia or loneliness, depending on your circumstances, but a time of anxiety can hit us at our weakest spots. I’ve seen Holly Taylor Coolman describe herself as “the ghost of quarantine future.” Assistant professor of theology at Providence College in Rhode Island, Coolman, together with her family, has been in the quarantine zone since a few weeks before the most ...
Roman crucifixion was torture, but not necessarily the most painful death possible. Here’s why that fact is so important…..
As we trudge through the Lenten season, heading towards Good Friday, the cross casts a long shadow over us. And perhaps during these penitential days, or on Good Friday itself, you will hear something like this coming from a preacher (or from a blog post): “The cross was the most horrific, most painful death possible.” Your homilist may even go on to describe the extreme suffering of Roman crucifixion, the death by asphyxiation, the agony of enduring the elements, and so on and so forth. And, at first glance, this may appear to be a persuasive piece of rhetoric, because it turns us towards the horrible reality of the cross and it humbles us before the tremendous suffering of the Lord. Only, this claim – that the Roman crucifixion suffered by Jesus is the most painful death possible – is fa...
How will we know when it’s time to reopen the nation? Experts offer four benchmarks to watch for…..
ImageTimes Square on Friday.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Everyone wants to know when we are going to be able to leave our homes and reopen the United States. That’s the wrong way to frame it. The better question is: “How will we know when to reopen the country?” Any date that is currently being thrown around is just a guess. It’s pulled out of the air. To this point, Americans have been reacting, often too late, and rarely with data. Most of us are engaging in social distancing because leaders have seen what’s happening in Europe or in New York; they want to avoid getting there; and we don’t have the testing available to know where coronavirus hot spots really are. Since the virus appears to be everywhere, we have to shut everything down. That’s unlikely to...
Joe Condit: Redeploying the Catholic Speakers Organization in the wake of COVID-19…
April 6, 2020 “We started a series of conversations, which will be online, with our speakers” on InspireWord.com, said Joe Condit, whose Catholic Speakers Organization represent 400 Catholic speakers and others. “We are going to bring you into the living room,” via social media platforms, of speakers offering “words of inspiration during these hard times, these challenging times, where folks’ lives have been turned upside down due to this coronavirus.”
