Weekly Word

Re-creation, holy leisure, is the mainstay of the contemplative soul, and the theology of Sabbath is its cornerstone.

Religion is meant to be a light, sign, watermark, path. Religion becomes a map to a place that no one has ever been. But the going on is up to me. And the way I go on is my spirituality.

It was a hot and honest session in that meeting of Palestinian and Israeli women in Oslo, Norway.

The Holy Spirit, we are told, is the spirit of Wisdom, of the feminine Sophia, in the Church.

The hard moments of life come when we feel ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of uselessness. We see people around us doing important things, public things, impressive things.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, the great Jesuit poet, said in his poem, “The May Magnificat,” that the reason May is Mary’s month is that it is the season of growth.

Celebrations are the firework moments of life that bring with them a sense of what it means to have become another part of ourselves.

“Never, ever, throw anything in the water,” my father taught me when we were out fishing, pop bottles and sandwich wrappers all over the bottom of the little skiff.

It is Mary Magdalene who goes with the other women to the tomb to the customary anointing of the corpse when all the others around Jesus had disassociated themselves from his life, his work, his vi

Jesus in the tomb is one proof we have that darkness is not the enemy. Our greatest enemy is the unwillingness to believe in dawn, in resurrection.

Everyone who has ever lived, who will ever live, will someday undergo a Holy Saturday of their own.

Lent, the liturgical year shows us, is about the holiness that suffering can bring. It is about bringing good where evil has been, about bringing love where hate has been.

It is very easy to forget the wonders God has done for us. God often performs these marvels when we are least hopeful they will happen, least sure they can happen.

 

On this planet, psychic numbing has been raised to high art. This people avoids pain and misery, in others as well as in themselves, at all costs.

Some old men came to see Abba Poemen, and said to him: “Tell us, when we see brothers dozing during the sacred office, should we pinch them so they will stay awake?” The old man said to them: “Actu