I watched Superman –Man of Steel, and the fundamental argument is that sometimes, you have to kill “for the greater good.” People did not like this movie for many reasons, but one of them was the fundamental reality –that we don’t want Superman to be morally ambiguous. We want our heroes to be heroic –bigger than life. It doesn’t matter what they do, we want, we long for those we admire to be better than they are. At the end... Read more
There’s been a growing trend amongst those in the Catholic world of media. Those who have “made it,” succumb to their own sins, presumptions and faults, leading to preaching something less than the Gospel. I suppose all of us preach less than the Gospel because all of us in our living, fail to grasp how entirely we need grace to get through the moments of each day, and how little of our success if we have success in this endeavor,... Read more
We just celebrated the Divine Mercy Sunday. We’ve held a Year of Mercy. Personally, I think we might need a booster shot Jubilee year of Mercy, because we seem to be finding the variants on hate, cruelty, pettiness, division, wrath and rage. What do we do with the person who is pro-choice? We love them. We offer friendship. We look for how we can work together to make the need for abortion unnecessary, because the world that surrounds the crisis... Read more
Most of us get Advent and we get Lent and we get the big wind up to Easter…but we don’t really know what to do with these fifty days until Pentecost. In Lent, we fast, pray and give alms –or are supposed to, and recognize that we are dust, and to dust we will return, that all this time is to help us discover how attached we are to sin and not Christ. However a lot of us spend time... Read more
Author’s Note: Wrote this last Friday before flying to Texas on Saturday to visit family. This week is Holy Week. The one thing we should know is, we are not ready. Lent reminds us annually of our fallen nature. If we succeed in our Lenten resolution, we will be tempted to boast of our success, even years after, and lose the lesson. If we fail in our Lenten resolution, we will be very cognisant of our weak willed and yet... Read more
I don’t know if other people experience hearing music in their heads during work when there’s a sign of triumph, of understanding, of hope, but I do. We’re doing quick writes in journals. When students don’t want to lift their pencils or put away their journals because they’re writing, I hear the music in my head, and I understand if only for a moment, why I teach. It is a silent joy because I can’t show it without disrupting the... Read more
We don’t know how we would have acted in the heated moment. We only know how the people in the heated moment acted. It’s rather like Portia in “The Merchant of Venice,” who can speak with glorious beauty about the greatness of God’s mercy until she has Shylock in her mercy. She then shows none. This weekend, we saw the play and I have to admit, I’d only read snatches of it in my studies, so I knew very little... Read more
“She would have to be a saint because that was the occupation that included everything you could know; and yet she knew she would never be a saint…. but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” ― Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories I think Flannery would laugh at the Goodread hashtag of sainthood with this quote. This quote isn’t so much about sainthood as it is about sinning. It is... Read more
Credit to Lokman Sevim Sorry I’ve been awol. In rebooting my computer, I needed to address some security issues and that locked me out of the administration element of this blog. It took me a weekend to figure out what to do, and another week before I got around to doing it…during which time I had surgery to remove the chemo port. I declare Victory of Battle No. 3 against cancer. (Victory No. 1 Biopsy/detection. Victory No. 2 Mastectomy) Now... Read more
Wrote this last Friday before I hopped on a plane to visit family in Texas on Saturday. This week is Holy Week. The one thing we should know is, we are not ready. Lent reminds us annually of our fallen nature. If we succeed in our Lenten resolution, we will be tempted to boast of our success, even years after, and lose the lesson. If we fail in our Lenten resolution, we will be cognizant of our weak willed and... Read more
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