Thursday, May 28, 2009

What will Obama do with his Notre Dame degree?

Obama at Notre Dame -are there reasons for hope?


Does President Obama's appearance last week at Notre Dame University offer Catholics any cause for hope?

Perhaps the university's namesake, Our Lady, may be able to accomplish something that the protests of faithful Catholics could not.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Pope Benedict shows how it's done


"Holiness... are You in there?""

Did Jesus ascend on the wrong day?


Musings of an Expagan » Lazy Catholicism

Feast of the Ascension

If I recall correctly it’s certain dioceses of the U.S. (and maybe a few other odd places) -not the entire Latin Rite- which have transferred observance of the Ascension to the nearest Sunday. What were these bishops thinking? Not sure, but it seems they were overcome by an irresistible urge to facilitate, to accommodate. As it is written,

"Make straight in the desert a highway for our parishioners."
"…and He shall wipe away every inconvenience from their calendars."
"Keep holy the Sabbath Day (but keep the other six for Yourself)." And,
"You’re lucky if they show up once a week."

Unlike the king who ordered that His servants compel guests to come into his wedding feast -this sort of approach not being popular among the voters- many of our ecclesiastical leaders instead have boldly determined that nobody need bother coming at all, unless they can manage to show up on Sunday after the kids’ soccer game.

After all, it’s only the Lord’s Ascension into glory. We can celebrate that any time we feel like it.

Oh, one more oft-forgotten passage: "Little can be expected of him whom little is asked."

One wonders whether these same bishops would like to take their chances showing up three days late for the General Resurrection.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Where heaven and earth meet

"He waits for us everyday, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it...”

“I assure you, my children, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you so often, and hammered away at it, that the Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my children, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives.”

-Passionately Loving the World, St. Josemaria Escriva

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Timely guidance from the fourth century

"Show your wife you appreciate her company a lot and that you prefer to be at home rather than outside, because she is there. Show her a preference among all your friends and even above the children she has given you; love them because of her ... Pray all together ... Learn the fear of God; everything else will flow from this like water from a fountain and your house will be filled with bounty."

-Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, 347-407 A.D.