So a priest friend, to make a point for the Kingdom, put me on the spot tonight and asked what the Responsorial Psalm at Mass today (Sunday) was. I did not remember. And of course it was, of all psalms: Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you! (Photo from Church of the Holy Sepulchre.) Do we truly hear the Word of God? Do we let ourselves be transformed by it? Read more
Before another week begins. Can we stop for a moment on Friday? The scribe asks Jesus: “Which is the first of all the commandments?” The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neightbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than... Read more
Good morning this Saint Patrick’s Day! Giving thanks to God for the Holy Trinity! Read more
Pope Benedict has given us great gifts in teaching about prayer. Take, for instance, his May 2011 catechesis on prayer and Jacob in the Old Testament. Late at night or Wednesday afternoon, we have much to learn here. “Our whole life is like this long night of battle and prayer that is meant to end in the desire and request for God’s blessing,” Pope Benedict explained, “which cannot be grasped or won by counting on our own strength, but must be... Read more
“My despised Jesus, nail this heart of mine to your feet, so that I may always remains there to love you and never leave you again.” — 11th Station, from Saint Alphonsus Liguori’s Way of the Cross Read more
Did you read Magnificat yesterday? It truly is a great gift when it becomes a part of your life. What a difference just a few pages a day can make! This comes from the late Father Maurice Zundel: We know very well — we ourselves have noticed it thousands of times — we know very well that we really exist only when we cease being slaves of our own temperament, of our rights. We cease being slaves inasmuch as we... Read more
Not to be stuck on this past Sunday and its Gospel reading, but Fr. Robert Barron provides some essential focus: While sharing the aversion of using religion as a means to gain material wealth, I think a more fruitful way of understanding Christ’s action to cleanse the temple can be discerned in relation to Israel’s aversion to the worship of false gods and the necessity of cleansing our own temple—that is, our lives—of these fallen deities. Remember, St. Paul said... Read more
I do not know if there is a better way to be serious about just that than the Way of the Cross. Praying station to station. As I’ve mentioned, I recently prayed it in Jerusalem, on a cold, wet, snowy pre-dawn morning. We used Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s text. But you don’t have to be physically on the Via Dolorosa to be jarred into attention. Here is how Archbishop Sheen presents the first station: Pilate, the time-serving politician, stepped forward on his... Read more
Yesterday was the Third Sunday in Lent. How quickly we pass from Ash Wednesday to the First Sunday in Lent and, well, here we are. The clock does keep ticking. And it’s not too late to have a holy Lent. Maybe you’ve given up booze or added a decade of the Rosary. Maybe not even that. Regardless, the question is: Are we anywhere closer to Christ? To dying to self? To something radically different than the procedural cultural norms? Archbishop... Read more
You turn a corner and see a sign. “Holy Sepulchre.” And there it is. Right there. Right here. He died here. For us. Because of us. Because of me. By the time you make it in and up the stairs to Calvary, it’s all too appropriate that you would encounter His mother, her heart pierced. When we celebrated Mass there, a little powerhouse of a Dominican sister showed up, standing, then leaning in prayer in front of that image of... Read more
Kathryn Lopez
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