Eve, source of the world’s misfortunes?
Is Eve, the one who let herself be seduced by the snake, who picked the fruit of the tree of knowledge and gave to Adam, the reason for all the misfortunes of the world?
DR. Congo: What it means to be a doctor and a missionary
Comboni Brother Juan Carlos Salgado, a medical doctor, has the joy of serving the poor and needy at Bondo hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Our Need to Share Our Riches With The Poor
We need to give away some of our own possessions in order to be healthy. Wealth that is hoarded always corrupts those who possess it. Any gift that is not shared turns sour. If we are not generous with our gifts we will be bitterly envied and will eventually turn bitter and envious ourselves.
Feeding off Life’s Sacred Fire
A healthy spirituality needs to be predicated on a proper understanding of God, ourselves, the world, and the energies that drive our world. These are the non-negotiable Christian principles within which we need to understand ourselves, the world, and the use of our energies.
Top 5 takeaways from the Amazon synod
The three-week Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian Region, on the theme, “Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for Integral Ecology,” concluded on Oct. 27 in Rome. Here are five key takeaways from the synod.
Fear Masking Itself as Piety
It is easy to mistake piety for the genuine response that God wants of us, that is, to enter into a relationship of intimacy with Him and then try to help others have that same experience.
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Luke wrote his Gospel around the year 85 A.D. In the fifty years that passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, tremendous events occurred. There were wars, political revolutions, catastrophes and the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. Christians became victims of injustices and persecutions. How to explain these dramatic events?
Always in a Hurry
Haste is our enemy. It puts us under stress, raises our blood pressure, makes us impatient, renders us more vulnerable to accidents and, most seriously of all, blinds us to the needs of others. Haste is normally not a virtue, irrespective of the goodness of the thing towards which we are hurrying.
Oral literature: The Hare and the Hyena
One day, a long time ago when there was a famine in a certain part of Africa, Hare met Hyena. “How thin you are looking,” said Hare. “You look as though you would not say No to a good meal either,’ replied Hyena.
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The feature that is most disturbing about our age is the crisis of hope. We have lost sight of the horizon of a final Future, and the small hopes of this life end up not consoling us. This vacuum of hope is generating the loss of trust in this life for all too many people. Nothing is worth it.
African Witness: South Sudan, Father Barnaba Deng
The soldiers grabbed him. Fr. Barnaba did not resist. He asked to be allowed to take his cassock and pray. He put it on, made the sign of the cross, and recollected himself in prayer while the soldiers released the safety catch on their rifles. “I am ready”
Death Washes Things Clean
When I was a child, our family prayed for and I spontaneously associated “a happy death” with dying cradled in the loving arms of family and church, fully at peace with God and everyone around you.
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Unlike what he did with the rich young man (Lk 18:18-23), Jesus did not ask Zacchaeus to “sell everything and to distribute his assets to the poor.” He did not reprimand him nor put any condition. He only asked to be welcomed.
Conversion and mission: this is how the Gospel can save the Amazon’s peoples and land
Conversion and mission: The golden thread that runs through the final document of the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.
Solemnity of All Saints
Let us ask ourselves which side we are on: that of heaven or that of earth? Do we live for the Lord or for ourselves, for eternal happiness or for some immediate gratification? Let us ask ourselves: do we truly want holiness? Or are we content with being Christians without infamy and without praise?
The Heart of a Child
Unless you change and become like little children you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
(Reflections by Ron Rolheiser)
The unprecedented scale of anti-Christian persecution in Asia
Nationalism, authoritarianism and militant Islamism: across Asia, the faithful are facing a perfect storm
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican usually awakens in many Christians a big rejection of the Pharisee who comes before God as someone arrogant and self-assured, along with a spontaneous sympathy for the Publican. Paradoxically, the story could awaken in us this sentiment: «I give you thanks, my God, that I’m not like this Pharisee».
African Witness: Julius Nyerere
Nyerere will be remembered for his outstanding personality and charismatic leadership. He lived a very simple life. Among his most important achievements we would mention first of all his concern for the rural population of Tanzania in trying to lift them out of poverty, ignorance and disease…
The Eucharist as Sacrifice
A sacrifice is any act of selflessness, of self-denial, which helps someone else. Ron Rolheiser, OMI THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE As Christians, we believe that Jesus sacrificed his life for … Continua a leggere
World Mission Day 2019. Catholic Church Statistics 2019
This missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission. People in love never stand still: they are drawn out of themselves; they are attracted and attract others in turn.
Priestly celibacy has dominated the first half of the synod
The central ecclesiastical issue within the synod hall emerged as the one that everyone knew it would be: a disciplinary question regarding mandatory celibacy for secular (roughly, “diocesan”) priests. Several senior prelates are in favour of relaxing the rule currently in force in the Latin Church.
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The Lord alerts the community against this danger represented by discouragement and resignation of the thought that the Spouse is not coming any more to render justice. He will surely come, but will he find his chosen ones ready to welcome him? To someone, his slowness could cause a loss of faith!
Martyr of Amazonia: Brother Paul McAuley
He gave his life for the poor of Amazonia. His commitment to guard our “Common Home” was his evangelical mandate.
A Primal Understanding of the Eucharist
In instituting the Eucharist at Last Supper, Jesus didn’t ask his disciples to understand what they were doing, he only asked them to faithfully celebrate it until he returned.
The Amazon synod, by the numbers
The Vatican’s Amazon synod began this week. Over 200 people are gathered in the Vatican to discuss the life and ministry of the Church in the Pan-Amazonian region, an area surrounding the Amazon River which spans nine countries.
The saint whose life was ‘a history of failures’
John Henry Newman’s life can well be described as one of continual failures, if only because that was how he saw it. “All through life things happen to me which do not happen to others – I am the scapegoat,” he wrote.
An English Catholic hero: a very short biography of John Henry Newman
We celebrate the canonisation of one of the great theologians of the modern age this Sunday.
Theologian, scholar, educationalist, poet, novelist, convert, cardinal and blessed are some of the outstanding titles of John Henry Newman we can celebrate on the occasion of his canonisation in Rome next Sunday (October 13th).
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
It was said in the time of Jesus: “Four categories of persons are treated as dead: the poor, the leper, the blind, and the childless.” The lepers felt rejected by all: by people and by God.
The Mystical Body
The deep, important things that most affect us are usually not big and showy, but tiny, perhaps even imperceptible… This is even more true of the body of Christ where most of the important processes there are also invisible.
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The major trouble provoked by the religion of merits is to reduce God to an accountant in charge of maintaining the account books in order and signing accurately the debits and credits of each one. The parable wants to destroy this image of God.
Martyr of Amazonia: Emrya Wajãpi
Emrya Wajãpi, leader of the Wajãpi people, was killed on 23rd July in Amapá, a region bordering French Guyana. The killing has been described as the “fruit of hate campaigns perpetrated against Indigenous peoples”.
African Witnesses: Blessed Pierre Claverie
He was assassinated on August 1, 1996, along with a Muslim friend, Mohamed Bouchikhi, who had made the choice to stay with him despite the risks. His death shocked not only Christians but also many Muslim Algerians who, at his funeral, said they had come to weep over a man who was also “their” bishop.
Pope Francis and Santa Teresita
Pope Francis has spoken on several occasions of his strong devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux — the Little Flower — as well as his habit of asking her for favors: favors, his former press secretary says, which have often come in the form little miracles.
Prayer as Seeking God’s Guidance
In Scripture, we see many examples of people who seek out God’s guidance in prayer, especially so when they are alone and afraid as they stand before some major upheaval or impending suffering in their lives.
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Commenting on this parable, St. Ambrose said: “When you give something to the poor, you don’t offer him what is yours, you give back what is his because the earth and the goods of this world are of all people, not of the rich.”
Moral Progress and Regression
Christianity and the cross (which lies at its center) can be compared to a time-released moral-capsule that is dissolving slowly in history.
A Crisis of Imagination
Imagine yourself lying in bed some night having just had a very good time of prayer. You are flooded with strong, clear feelings and images about God. On that particular evening you have no faith doubts – you can feel the existence of God.
In Our Full Humanity
Daniel Berrigan once said: “Don’t travel with anyone who expects you to be interesting all the time!”
African Witnesses: Vivian Uchechi Ogu
The striking heroism in the story of Vivian is in the remarkable way in which she expressed her Christian faith, having extraordinary influence on the lives of others from the tender age of nine and the courage with which she put into practice what she had been preaching when the opportunity came at the age of fourteen, opting to be killed rather than to be defiled.
From Maintenance to Missionary
We need to become more deliberately, reflectively, and programmatically missionary within our own culture, to our own children. We need to send missionaries into secularity in the very same way as we once sent them off to faraway countries. The church in the secularized world needs a new kind of missionary.
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The administrator was shrewd—says the Lord—because he understood on which to bet on: not on goods, products that he was entitled to, that could rot or be stolen, but on friends. He knew how to renounce the first in order to conquer for himself the second. This is the point.
Martyr of Amazonia: Sr. Dorothy Stang
On 12 February 2005, the whole of Brazil was stunned by the news that Sr Dorothy Stang had been assassinated. That morning, the gunmen contracted to kill her found her alone on a track in the middle of the Amazonian forest.
Gratitude as a Daily Practice
One may define gratitude as “the quality of being thankful.” Alternatively, we can think of it as an attitude, emotion, personal trait, or behavioral practice. However it is conceived, the … Continua a leggere
African Witnesses: Uganda – Lukwiya Matthew
“I am ready for anything but, God willing, I should like to be the last one to die of Ebola”.
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Will we get on the road to God our Father? Many would do that if they would know that God who, according to Jesus’ parable, «ran to his son, clasped him in his arms and kissed him over and over». Those embraces and those kisses speak of God’s love better than every theology book written.
A Comboni Father Ezekiel Ramin: A patron Saint for the Amazon Synod
A patron Saint for the Synod. Brazilian bishops ask the Pope that he be Father Ezekiel Ramin, Comboni priest killed in the Amazon region.
The Imperfection of Perfectionism
Standards can stimulate personal growth and push a person to reach a peak level of performance, ideally bringing enjoyment and developing confidence. Problems arise, though, when the standards a person sets for herself or for others are unrealistically high and inflexible. Standards become problematic when they lapse into perfectionism.
Affective Prayer
“You must try to pray so that, in your prayer, you open yourself in such a way that sometime – perhaps not today, but sometime – you are able to hear God say to you: ‘I love you!’…
African Witness: Bishop Ireneo Wien Dud
As a young priest, Bishop Dud had always been a kind hearted person, used to spending hours in prayer interceding for the people and reaching out to anyone calling on him. He lived the whole of his life loving people and struggling to keep the various pastoral agents together
