Many years ago, I was in a talk given by Fr. James Keenan, SJ, one of the premier moral theologians in the world. He recounted his experience of visiting the memorial inside the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau, in Germany. Like Auswitch, Dachau has come to symbolize the Nazi atrocities during the war. Around 70,000 … Continue reading Barbwires
#186: The Science of Happiness – Forgive and Forget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o9_TlZyB_Y Today, we pray for the difficult capacity (and grace) to forgive. Watch this video as your prayer. Then think of a person you've had a grudge with for some time and (while it may be difficult at first) pray for him/her. Let that be your prayer today. You might want to end this time … Continue reading #186: The Science of Happiness – Forgive and Forget
#105: Ravensbruck Prayer
Without context, this prayer will not make sense at all. But to know that this was written on a piece of wrapping paper found near the body of a dead child during the Holocaust makes this prayer one of the greatest prayers ever made. May we find consolation in this -- that men and women … Continue reading #105: Ravensbruck Prayer
Adultery
In our zeal, we drag a woman caught in adultery and show her shame for all the world to see. We are incensed by what she has done, indignant at the disgrace she has brought upon herself and us. We ask the Lord to pronounce the sentence she deserves. And pronounce we must our stand … Continue reading Adultery
5 Things You Need to Stop Doing This 2014
It is 2014! It is time for some changes. The future is bright. The air is newer, the sky bluer, life is beautiful. And because it is a new year, we have the strength and the resolve to change, and we promise ourselves and the people around us that we will. And we become so … Continue reading 5 Things You Need to Stop Doing This 2014
Much
by Fr. Jet Villarin, SJ Listen to something lovely and radical happening in the Gospel story today. The uprooting happens when Jesus is invited to dine with Simon the Pharisee. A woman (presumably of the night, “a sinful woman in the city”) gatecrashes the party and begins “to bathe his feet with her tears,”wiping those … Continue reading Much
Think
In a way, I am grateful for some of the esoteric and elegant math I’ve learned in physics. It gives me a nosebleed idea of the way God thinks. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
Forgiveness
It is easy to check how much taller we've grown or how many more wrinkles and gray hair we have and how much weight we've gained over the years. But it's a little bit more tricky when we want to check how far we've come in terms of our-as one writer calls it-"inner landscape." I've found that rereading journal entries, old letters and old college and high school compositions is a good way to look at emotional and psychological photographs of ourselves.
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