10 Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today (Feb. 29, 2016)

1. Athirst is my soul for the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?

2. Do We Make Christ and His Church Look Attractive to Others?

3. God wants us to know and be known. Matthew Kelly on radical relationships.

4. From Kathleen Beckman in God’s Healing Mercy:

Jesus accepted Peter’s repentance, affirmed him, and raised him up. Jesus loved Peter and used Peter’s weakness to glorify Divine Mercy…. After Peter’s transformation at Pentecost, he would never repeat his mistakes. He was able to receive God’s forgiveness. He became transformed by Divine Mercy. Jesus gave Peter a second and third chance. We believe in a God of second and third chances. Jesus never gives up on a person.

More about that book here and here and here.

5.So beautiful is the homily in the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours today from St. Basil the Great. Some of it:

Paul boasts of the fact that he holds his own righteousness in contempt and seeks the righteousness in faith that comes through Christ and is from God. He wants only to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to have fellowship with his sufferings by taking on the likeness of his death, in the hope that somehow he may arrive at the resurrection of the dead.

Here we see all overweening pride laid low. Humanity, there is nothing left for you to boast of, for your boasting and hope lie in putting to death all that is your own and seeking the future life that is in Christ. Since we have its first fruits we are already in its midst, living entirely in the grace and gift of God.

It is God who is active within us, giving us both the will and the achievement, in accordance with his good purpose. Through his Spirit, God also reveals his wisdom in the plan he has preordained for our glory.

God gives power and strength in our labors. I have toiled harder than all the others, Paul says, but it is not I but the grace of God, which is with me.

God rescues us from dangers beyond all human expectation. We felt within ourselves that we had received the sentence of death, so that we might not trust ourselves but in God, who raises the dead; from so great a danger did he deliver us, and does deliver us; we hope in him, for he will deliver us again.

6. From Bishop Sam Jacobs (who sends out Scriptural reflections and other thoughts you can subscribe to here):

It is so important that we filter out the lies, so that we can more clearly hear the truth. Jesus experienced the lies of the voices around him, but he knew that only the voice of the Father spoke the truth to him.

7. Throughout the world this weekend, 24 hours of opportunities for Confession.

8. From Magnificat today on rising up and going forward:

More about Mother Mary Francis and the Poor Clares here.

9.

We are asked to seek out, to accompany, to lift up, to bind up the wounds of our time. [Pope Francis in Philadelphia]

— Bishop Barres (@BishopBarres) February 29, 2016

10.

It is in our fulfillment of the demand of love in the immediacy of life's circumstances that we learn to love what Christ loves.

— FrSteveGrunow (@FrSteveGrunow) February 29, 2016