15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Jesus tells this parable in a difficult moment of his life. In Nazareth, he is cast out, in Capernaum, he is taken as mad, the Pharisees want to kill him, and the disciples abandon him. It just seems that all his preaching has fallen in vain. The conditions are too unfavorable; his word seems destined to die
Everyday Life as Sacrament
For Christians, ultimately the whole world is holy and everything in it, especially the physical, is potential material for sacrament.
Lost is a Place Too
In her book, Survivor, Christina Crawford writes: “Lost is a place, too.” That’s more than a clever sound bite. It’s a deep truth that’s often lost in a world within which success, achievement, and good appearance define meaning and value.
Sr. Thea Bowman: “To be black and Catholic means that I bring myself, my black self”
She was the granddaughter of a slave, an advocate for racial justice, and the first African American woman to address the U.S. bishops’ conference. Two years ago, her sainthood cause was opened.
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Jesus is presented as meek and humble of heart. These are the terms that we find in the Beatitudes. They do not indicate the timid, the meek, the quiet, but those who are poor and oppressed, those who, while suffering injustice, do not resort to violence.
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
The second of the five discourses of Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew develops the themes related to sending of the disciples to a mission. Today we are offered the concluding passage.
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
This Sunday’s Gospel contains a number of ideas but they all can be summarized in this apparently contradictory phrase: “Have fear but do not be afraid.” Jesus says: “Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear rather him who has the power to make both the soul and the body perish in Gehenna.”
Von Balthasar – Heart of Jesus, the heart of the world
THE VERY FORM OF THE CROSS, extending out into the four winds, always told the ancient Church that the Cross means solidarity: its outstretched arms would gladly embrace the universe. According to the Didache, the Cross is semeion epektaseos, a “sign of expansion”, and only God himself can have such a wide reach
Naming the Present Moment & A Retreat Opportunity
Putting proper names to what is happening inside our experience is the place where we can read the language of God.
Solemnity of Corpus Domini (A)
Today, to each of us, the word of God says, Remember! Remembrance of the Lord’s deeds guided and strengthened his people’s journey through the desert; remembering all that the Lord has done for us is the foundation of our own personal history of salvation. Remembrance is essential for faith, as water is for a plant.
Ethiopia marks World Environment Day aiming to plant 5bn trees
Marking World Environment Day, Ethiopia’s President launches a project that aims to plant 5 billion tree seedlings amid the enduring Covid-19 pandemic that has led to the drawing of parallels between the global health crisis and climate change.
Witnesses: Annalena Tonelli, Mother Teresa of Somalia
An Italian lawyer and social activist, she volunteered to the service of the poor and sick for 33 years in Africa. At an early age, Annalena Tonelli (1943 – 2003) was attracted by the example of the radical Christianity of Blessed Charles de Foucauld and, in an extraordinary way, imitated his example.
Trinity Sunday (A)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him may not be lost”(v. 16). It can be considered the summit reached by the biblical revelation on the meaning of creation, life and human destiny.
The Nubian people: between Egypt and Sudan
The legacy of the time of the Pharaohs of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty is being ransomed after the silence caused by intentionally misrepresented history. Now, researchers and institutions are recovering the splendour of the Nubian civilization.
One Spirit – One Source of All
Someone once said that the law of gravity and the law of love ultimately have the same source and are both driven by the same spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Kenya historical sites: Gedi, a country town
The Swahili coast is dotted with settlements, some dating back to the X century. Apart from the many villages, there is an impressive number of towns boasting permanent buildings, often two or three story high. Among the most known ruins is Gedi, 100 km north of Mombasa. We visited the place.
Pentecost Sunday (A)
The Holy Spirit is the life of the Church and every Christian. He animates us and gifts us with the charisms for the good of the society. He helps us relate to one another as sisters and brothers of Christ, thus uniting us into one body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the union and understanding among peoples.
Painful Goodbyes and the Ascension
Among the deeper mysteries in life is the mystery of the Ascension. It’s not so much that we misunderstand it, we simply don’t understand it.
Tomás Halík – Christianity in a time of sickness
The time has come to examine the deeper implications of this blow to the security of our world. The unavoidable process of globalization would seem to have peaked. The global vulnerability of a global world is now plain to see.
In Safer Hands Than Ours
Everything that Jesus reveals about God assures us that God’s hands are much gentler and safer than our own.
Ascension of the Lord (A)
Unlike Luke and John, he places the encounter with the Risen not in Jerusalem but in Galilee. This geographical setting has a theological value: the evangelist wants to say that the mission of the apostles begins where their Master had begun.
God’s Inexhaustibility
For all of us there are times in life when we seem to lose hope, when we look at the world or at ourselves and, consciously or unconsciously, think: “It’s too late! This has gone too far! Nothing can redeem this! All the chances to change this have been used up! It’s hopeless!”
6th Sunday of Easter (A)
Even today’s Gospel, like last Sunday’s, is taken from the first of three farewell speeches given by Jesus at the Last Supper. The disciples have understood that Jesus is leaving them. They are sad and they ask themselves how they could continue to be united and to love him if he is gone.
Never Grow Weary
There is a Norwegian proverb that reads: Heroism consists of hanging on one minute longer.
True heroism often consists in staying the course long enough, of hanging on when it seems hopeless, of suffering cold and aloneness while waiting for a new day.
Papacies in Lockdown
Francis himself now even uses the word “caged” to describe the effect of the limitations imposed on him. And yet, over the last two centuries, several of Francis’s predecessors have faced similar conditions.
5th Sunday of Easter (A)
The passage in today’s Gospel is taken from the first of three farewell speeches pronounced by Jesus at the Last Supper after Judas went out to implement his intention of treason. They are called so because in them Jesus seems to dictate his last will, before facing his passion and death.
The Silence of Life
We will not get in touch with the deep source of our lives if the activities of our life are so consuming and obsessive that we can never find an identity and meaning in something beyond them.
May with Mary
The Rosary is a prayer for the home, and a prayer for the road. It is a prayer which builds community and also which propels us on our journey…
World Day of Vocations 2020
Pain, gratitude, encouragement and praise, on this 57th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, those words can be addressed to the whole people of God, against the backdrop of the Gospel passage that recounts for us the remarkable experience of Jesus and Peter during a stormy night on the Sea of Galilee (Mt 14)
4th Sunday of Easter (A)
To say—as Luke does in the story of the birth of Jesus (Lk 2:8)—that those who stood guard “watched” is not entirely accurate. In fact, armed with a stick, he was positioned at the entrance of the fold—that had no door. He squatted and, in that position, blocking the access, he himself became “the door.”
Struggling to be inside the Present Moment
During the last years of his life, Thomas Merton lived in a hermitage in an attempt to find more solitude in his life. But solitude is a very illusive thing and he found that it was continually escaping him.
3th Sunday of Easter (A)
Why couldn’t they recognize Jesus in the traveler? What sense has a miracle of this kind: is it used to create suspense? One notices that the text does not say that Jesus was hidden under a false guise, but that their eyes were kept from recognizing him … and it will be important to establish the reason for this blindness.
The Lord’s resurrection and the resurrection of his disciple
Let us silence the cries of death, no more wars! May we stop the production and trade of weapons, since we need bread, not guns. Let the abortion and killing of innocent lives end. May the hearts of those who have enough be open to filling the empty hands of those who do not have the bare necessities.
Hearing the Voice that Soothes
Karl Rahner had it right when he said that we do not have souls that get restless, but that our souls themselves are lonely caverns thirsting the infinite, deep wells of restlessness.
2nd Sunday of Easter (A)
Today’s passage is divided into two parts corresponding to the appearances of the Risen One. In the first (vv. 19-23), Jesus communicates his Spirit to his disciples. With that, he gives them the power to overcome the forces of evil. In the second (vv. 24-31), the famous episode of Thomas is told.
The Easter Faith
This is part of a beautiful article and inspiring meditation titled “Risen Time: Easter as the Source of History” by Fr. Jose Granados, where he situates the paschal mystery in relation to the historical faith of Israel and in relation to the human experience of time and matter.
Easter Sunday (A)
What does the Church tell us today before so many tragedies? Simply this: the discarded stone is not really discarded. The pebbles which believe and stick to that stone are not discarded. They have meaning and it is with this sentiment that the Church repeats from the bottom of Her heart: “Christ is Risen”.
Sudan: Walking with the Nuba People
American doctor Tom Catena earns top medical missionary award for saving lives in Africa’s forgotten war zone. An American surgeon – who has cared for more than a million patients … Continua a leggere
Palm and Passion Sunday
All the evangelists devote much space to the story of the passion and death of Jesus. The facts are basically the same, though narrated in different ways and with different perspectives. Each evangelist presents his own episodes and details of choice, underscoring different aspects.
The Ninety-Nine and the One
Throughout the years that I’ve been writing, I have sometimes been asked “Why do you write the way you do, invariably with some kind of secular bent? Why don’t you focus more on catechesis, teaching church doctrine, explaining the creeds, defending the church’s position on moral issues, and doing apologetics for the church?”
5th Sunday of Lent (A)
It is painful to be left by a friend, but it is selfish to want to hold on to him. It would be like preventing a child to be born. “Untie, let him go”—Jesus sweetly repeats today to every disciple who does not resign himself to the death of a brother or a sister.
Weakness Builds the Soul
Psychologist and author James Hillman suggests that it is our inferiorities that build up our souls. His view is that it is not our strengths that give us depth and character, but our weaknesses.
4th Sunday of Lent (A)
We need believers of the truth, attentive to life and sensitive to the problems people have, seekers of God who are capable of listening and accompanying respectfully the great number of men and women who are suffering, who seek and don’t find a way to live that is more human and more believing.
Joseph, a word from the deep Silence
Joseph is certainly not the man portrayed by a certain iconography. Surrounded by mystery, within a family that he loved and where he felt loved, identified with his vocation of protecting the Author of Life, exercising his profession competently, he was… A HAPPY MAN, a son of his Son’s Resurrection! (Luke 20:36)
The size of our Hearts
God puts us into this world with huge hearts. The human heart in itself, when not closed off by fear, wound, and paranoia, is the antithesis of pettiness. There’s nothing small about the human heart.
Challenges Facing Africa
An examination of issues related to the extraction industries, trade agreements, land grabs, capital flight, corporate tax evasions, human trafficking, mass migrations, and the endemic conflicts.
3rd Sunday of Lent (A)
The Bible tells many of these meetings at the well. The one read in today’s Gospel has Jesus and a Samaritan woman as protagonists. The well mentioned still exists. It is located along the road that leads from Judea to Galilee. It is more than three thousand years, is very deep (32 m) and still gives good and fresh water, as in the time of Jesus.
2nd Sunday of Lent (A)
Encounter with God in prayer inspires us anew to “descend the mountain” and return to the plain where we meet many brothers weighed down by fatigue, sickness, injustice, ignorance, poverty both material and spiritual.
1st Sunday of Lent (A)
And please, do not forget — do not forget! — what would happen were we to treat the Bible as we treat our mobile phone. Think about this: the Bible always with us, close to us!
The Way of the Cross with Oscar Romero
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his martyrdom, we offer you a Way of the Cross with reflections of saint Oscar Romero.
