Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 10:38-42) is so familiar, many will be surprised it occurs only in Luke: Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what
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A friend sent me Rachel Held Evans’ opinion piece, Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church ‘cool.’ Rachel is a well-known author (Searching for Sunday, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Faith Unraveled). She provides pretty standard statistics of decline:”…no religious affiliation at all,…significantly more disconnected from faith…” I hadn’t heard of
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Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary by the Monks of Saint John’s Abbey (Author), Maxwell E. Johnson (Editor) Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota (2005; second edition 2015) 2088 pages; 6.2 x 4.4 x 1.9 inches; 5 ribbons included. As part of my ongoing rebuilding older sections of this site, I have reblogged some earlier posts in
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The language we use, the words we choose, form lenses for the reality we are talking about. At the Sacra Liturgia conference in London on Tuesday last week, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, asked that priests begin presiding at the Eucharist ad orientem, that
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A book someone was reading caught my eye. “Is that fiction or nonfiction?” I asked the reader. “It’s mostly true,” he replied. “That wasn’t what I asked,” I said. The Bible is all true, and much of it happened. The story of Job, for example, essentially starts, “Once upon a time in a faraway land
Let’s Stop Using This Word (5): True Read More »
Pope Francis has been making waves. The Orthodox are trying to catch up with our new context. And some people are trying to turn back the clock. Looking East or West? Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has asked that priests begin presiding at the
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As part of my ongoing rebuilding older sections of this site, I have reblogged some earlier posts in the spirit of Throwback Thursday. This is a post from 2007 – the principle expressed is no less relevant today than then. One also may read it in the spirit of sadness and penitence that essentially no
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A recent comment made what I think is a very important point: Mainstream popular music depends on a principle of planned obsolescence: a song is big hit for a short time and is then quickly replaced by the next big hit. Within this environment, it’s easy to lose sight of the power of tradition. There’s
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