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[embedded content] Author AJ Jacobs shows how the coffee cup lid was perfectly designed to give you a full sensory experience while drinking.

January 1 is the Solemnity (Holy Day) of Mary, Mother of God.  To call Mary the “Mother of God” must not be understood as a claim for Mary’s motherhood of divinity itself, but in the sense that Mary was mother of Jesus, who is truly God.  The Council of Ephesus in 431—long before the schisms with the Eastern churches and the Protestants—proclaimed “Mother of God” a theologically correct title for Mary.  So far from being a cause of division, the common confession of Mary as “Mother of God” should unite all Christians, and distinguish Christian orthodoxy from various confusions of it, such as Arianism (the denial that Jesus was God) or Nestorianism (in which Mary mothers only the human nature of Jesus but not his whole person). Two themes are present in the Readings for this ...

“My soul takes pleasure in three things, and they are beautiful in the sight of the Lord and of men; agreement between brothers, friendship between neighbors, and a wife and a husband who live in harmony.”Sirach Among these three beautiful things, the third perhaps stands out as most notable and worthy of honor and remembrance: when a wife and husband live in harmony. But what exactly is living in harmony? Surely there are degrees, and there can still be real harmony even in a relationship regularly dogged by misunderstanding and dissension. It’s not uncommon that young newlyweds resolve to have a better marriage than those they have seen up close. And perhaps this is fitting. Yet often a husband and wife, sometimes sooner and sometimes later, come to a more nuanced view of the complexitie...

Joliet, Ill., Dec 28, 2019 / 09:20 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Joliet announced Friday that Bishop Daniel Conlon will take a medical leave of absence from leadership of the Illinois diocese. During Conlon’s absence, “Bishop Richard E. Pates, Bishop Emeritus of Des Moines, will serve as Apostolic Administrator of the diocese,” the diocese said in a Dec. 27 statement. “Bishop Conlon expresses his deep affection for the clergy, religious and laity of the Diocese of Joliet and will keep them in his prayers during his time away. He also asks for their prayers,” the statement added. The diocese did not say what health problems Conlon is facing. Conlon, 71, has been Joliet’s bishop since 2011. From 2002 until 2011 he was Bishop of Steubenville, and before that a priest in the Archdiocese of Steuben...

Something at Christmas urges me (a man of many words) to write of holy silence. Perhaps it is due to one of the great Christmas antiphons, which speaks of the birth of Christ as a magnum mysterium (a great mystery). During Mass recently, the words of Zechariah came to my mind: Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord … Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling (Zechariah 2:11, 13). There is a common idiom: “Words fail me.” It is in this context that we can best understand God’s call to fall silent before the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation. Notice in the passage above that the call to silence follows the call to “sing and rejoice.” Is there a difference between singing and rejo...

A few days ago, I went to my trusted Lebanese-American mechanic for an oil change. The Christians of the East have always had a penchant for discussing theology, politics, and race – and as far as theology is concerned, the Easterners have all the theology they could want to discuss and contest. My routine car service, therefore, usually turns into interesting discussions on theology, Church history, and – most recently – the state of persecuted Christians in the East. I guess this is one of the benefits of my being a Church historian. It happens that my mechanic was fresh back from Lebanon, which he had visited for his mother’s funeral. He had a lot to tell me about the persecution and harassment Lebanese Christians are suffering at the hands of the Muslim majority and about recent protes...

The love of Jesus saves because it has the power to bear away sin. The witness of the Holy Innocents shows us that the powerful of this world do not have the final say about humanity. At the end of the day, no matter how much violence is unleashed, Christ’s saving love will raise up the lowly and the powerless – even if they are as helpless as infants and children. Because of Christ, they suffered, but because of Him, they testify to something good and true about humanity – that the most vulnerable of our society to not admit of being used as a means to and end, that those who do so will never thwart the plan of God. For the saving power of God is greater than the power of evil. If the Savior has so much power over the affairs of the world, what about the movements of the...

ROME – Suppose that, looking back at the close of a decade, there were two great narratives about a given group of people, one a tale of scandal and dark deeds coming to light, the other a story of suffering, victimization, and vulnerability. Suppose, further, that the former storyline dominated global headlines, finishing as one of the most covered stories of the decade along with Donald Trump and climate change, while the other was second- or third-tier, with many average people not even aware it was happening. Suppose the scandal produced an Academy Award-winning movie that grossed $100 million worldwide, but the suffering had no movie, no anthem, no real pop culture footprint. That group might well have a beef, and Christmas 2019 has offered another grisly reminder of the point. On Dec...

It is not difficult to demonstrate that most of our modern problems center around struggles and misunderstandings regarding marriage, sexuality, and the family. Collectively as a nation and the culture, we have departed significantly from the teachings of God and common sense, when it comes to our thinking and behavior regarding these three fundamental pillars. Today’s Feast of the Holy Family presents us an opportunity to reflect, and provides a rich tapestry of Scriptures. Many of these teachings are not “politically correct,” but for that, no apology should be made. They remain God’s teachings and it is hard to argue that modern notions of sexuality, marriage and family have produced anything short of catastrophe and disaster. And as is usually the case, it is the children suffer the mo...

Celluloid glimpses of the Glory of God, from Miracle on 34th Street to Home Alone 2. So I was talking to Matt Swaim on the Son Rise Morning Show about G.K. Chesterton’s great appreciation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and he mentioned that many Christmas-themed movies feature conversions like Scrooge’s: he brought up The Grinch Who Stole Christmas or The Grinch as an example, and It’s a Wonderful Life. But as Turner Classic Movies and other cable stations are showing movies with Christmas settings, I began to think of many more Christmas conversions — changes of heart, family reconciliations, and renewed hope brought about by the “spirit of Christmas.” Even all those Hallmark Channel Christmas movies are about some kind of conversion: from career ...

As Ben Franklin once quipped, death is one of the only certainties in life. And with that certainty comes an endless supply of customers. Every year, 2.8m people die in the US. Around 40% of them opt to be buried — most commonly, in a casket. A $550m-per-year business, caskets make up a healthy portion of the much larger $20B death industry. The market for burials has never been more flooded with options. You can now spend your post-life years buried in a bodysuit fashioned out of mushrooms, in a pod that turns you into a tree, or in an IKEA-style casket you assemble yourself. Whatever your post-mortem niche, there’s probably a startup for it. But despite this abundance of businesses, efforts to re-envision the casket industry have largely fallen flat. That’s because today, the vast majori...