Why Daily Mass?

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Over at Catholic Voices USA (which I am a director of), Elise Italiano mentions Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty, who founded Madonna House. The passing reference had me hungry for her riches, and Magnificat today did not disappoint. The passage is titled “How Christ Comes to Heal Us” and follows: The Mass is [...]

Thanks be to God!

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Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God! There is something about that Deo gratias at the end of Mass, isn’t there? We are a missionary people, going out into the world, sanctified by the indwelling of our God! What overwhelming consolation. What overwhelming responsibility. What desire to stay with this. [...]

Am I Totally Available to God?

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The reflection in Magnificat today, that beautiful daily devotional, is on discipleship and discipline and it is what we need to drink in, by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis: It is not enough by far to have taken radical initial steps of conversion and to be a reasonably observant and faithful Christian. At the center of our being [...]

‘Gotta Have Faith.’ What Is It?

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There’s is a catechetical reflection in the Year of Faith book Magnificat has out this week. This one in particular I am looking at from Tuesday reflects on this passage of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response [...]

Not at Peace?

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It’s hard to resist sharing a little from Magnificat some days. Did you read this yet? Ah, children, when a man feels himself dull, hard, and slow, being oppressed by nature; when peace is gone; when he is become quite helpless; then let him detach his soul’s affections from everything, yield himself up entirely to [...]

A Day in the Life of Faith

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We are in the second week of a Year of Faith, and in the Magnificat Year of Faith Companion yesterday was an entry not to be overlooked. It was from the writings of Dorothy Day and in it she cuts to the core of what a Year of Faith, and our lives, ought to be [...]

The Cross Is Everywhere, and Here’s a Bottom Line About It

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Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P.: The cross is unbearable if viewed from the outside. The cross is wisdom if viewed in the light of faith, that is, from the inside, as God himself views it. The quote comes courtesy of Magnificat, as essential meditations so often do.

Staying on the Road of Christ — Even on the Road to the White House

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I got some messages of distress last night in response to Sister Simone Campbell speaking at the Democratic Convention. They were the same kinds of e-mails and other messages I received when Notre Dame invited Barack Obama to speak. The same kinds I get when a Catholic drives intrinsically evil policy, or otherwise gives it [...]

Yo, Bro!

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This would be appropriate and nourishing and challenging any day, but at a time when we’re reminded as a nation to look around and love a little more, this meditation today in the indispensible Magnificat is an especially timely guide: We must also nourish this deep desire to meet God so that when the opportunity [...]

Let There Be Peace on Earth

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I had dinner Thursday night in Bethlehem across the street from that awful wall dividing Bethlehem and Jerusalem, so direly reminiscent of Germany’s past. So Gregory of Nyssa’s medidation in the Magnificat for the first of March took on some added significance. “Recognizing Christ as ‘peace,’ we shall exhibit the true title of Christian in [...]