Photo credit: Pixabay.com Last week’s blog title was Why Some of Us Stay: A Struggle of Faith and I could not believe the number of wonderful responses I received in my email account. Most people agreed that they stay because of community generated by belonging to a caring group. Others liked the idea that faith is “larger than any... Continue Reading →
Why Some of Us Stay: A Struggle of Faith
Photo credit: Pixabay.com A few years ago, I mentioned, in one of my blogs, why I stay a Catholic. The other day, a frustrated voter asked pointedly: “If you weren’t a nun, would you stay a Catholic?” I said, yes. But my answer needs fuller development, maybe even a book! So, I looked at the... Continue Reading →
Prayer and Voting – Let’s Do Both
Pixabay.com Forgive me if I have written this before in my blog. I remember it was a chilly early November Sunday morning when I was to meet my fourth and fifth grade catechism class at a semi-rural church here in Ohio. The parish was fairly upper class and the children bright and eager to learn about their... Continue Reading →
Large Print and Double-spaced: Please Do Not Worry
Last week I had the privilege of giving a retreat to my Sisters in our infirmary in Cincinnati. I worked the week before to make sensible outlines of my presentations and I prayed a lot. On the day the retreat opened, one of the sisters saw that I was carrying a three-ring binder in which the outlines... Continue Reading →
And Then He Said: “When we Lose, We Bleed.”
Pixabay.com Ok: Breather again. Terry Franconca, the beloved manager of the Cleveland Guardians Major League Baseball Team, is an Aristotelian philosopher of sports. I’ve always taken something from his interviews with broadcasters, especially as he leaves them scratching their heads and totally flummoxed as to how they might respond. Francona never cuts competitors at the knees. There is... Continue Reading →
Does God Listen to the Prayer in the Plaza?
All 24 of us are eager to make it to the Temple Wall in Jerusalem on a brilliant sunlit day promising to be a little cooler than the last days. We enter the plaza, a wide area where many people are gathering and wandering to places they know to go, women on one side, men on... Continue Reading →
Praying in Desperate Times
Garden of Gethsemane, Credit: MAF Old Olive Tree, Credit: Pixabay.com Inside the Basilica of Gethsemane is the Holy Stone on which Christ is said to have wept and sweated “droplets of blood” in his acute agony for what was to happen to him and the movement of faith he had begun. Our group has made it... Continue Reading →
On Sand, On Cobblestones, on Mountains and at Seaside: You Walked With Me
My Friends, I am delighted to tell you that you were all with me as I traveled the Holy Land of our Christian faith - and places of our Jewish heritage as well and revered places of our Muslim brothers and sisters. Over the next few blogs, I hope to show you how you were... Continue Reading →
How God Speaks Through Stillness
Photo credit: Mary Ann Flannery, SC Are you hungry to hear God? Most assuredly God speaks through all kinds of human activity: noise, industry, human voices, music, in short, the cacophony of life. That is, if you are attuned to hearing God. Well, yes, even if you’re not attuned like in the flash of grace that seers through... Continue Reading →
The Power of Words Sung in Faith
Pixabay.com For some time, I’ve been pondering if I should touch on a current word that suggests political division to some people but is really an inspired word for people of some faiths. I find that many believe it to be divisive until it’s discussed in the context of its etymology, history, and usage. As I was... Continue Reading →