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My neighbor of many years was recently arrested for viewing child pornography. I’ve known him and his beautiful family since they moved into our neighborhood; I had considered him a pillar of the community.
I’ll Push You
There have been many documentaries about the Camino de Compostela, but none as inspiring or emotionally powerful as the story of Justin Skeesuck and Patrick Gray in the documentary I’ll Push You.
I recently attended a Way of the Cross that ended with a 15th station: Jesus rises from the tomb. Is this allowed? Also, Communion was distributed at the end of this service. Is that permitted?
The practice of having a 15th station has become more common in the last 50 years, especially through the influence of Cursillo groups. The reason is to end this prayer on an obviously upbeat tone.
Placing our lives in God’s hands might temper over-concern for our self and our obsession with health.
Pause for a moment and look around you. Simply thank God for all the gifts that you have right now, all the gifts saved from the wreck of life: the lamp that illumines this page, the chair that gives you comfort, the home that provides shelter. That’s a good exercise of stewardship.
Thank God for the sun and stars in the sky, for the support of friends, for the opportunities of a new day, for the ability to laugh and cry. A disciple receives everything with gratitude. It is prayer that helps keep the heart grateful and filled with joy.
Wonder
Ten-year-old August “Auggie ” Pullman (Jacob Tremblay) has been homeschooled his entire life because of Treacher Collins syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects his hearing, sight, and appearance. He loves science and wants to go to the moon someday. Though he’s had 26 reconstructive surgeries, he still wears a NASA space helmet everywhere to hide his face. His mom, Isabel (Julia Roberts), enrolls him in a prep middle school because all the fifth-graders will be new there.
It’s not the darkness itself that we must understand. It’s the force behind the darkness and within the darkness … the force moving through life that we must know. This is the great passage: to see deep into our own nature by meeting its reflection in everything around us. To swim with something very big. To allow the Universe to love us and to love deeply in return … to allow this story to trace itself through the chapters of our life. To live within the miracle.
The US Department of Justice reports that one in three Black American men can expect to go to prison in his lifetime.
John Paul acknowledges that everyone suffers, and suffering is an evil because it diminishes physical and psychological well-being. It can also be spiritually destructive, leading as it does to doubt the existence of God. Why would a good and loving God allow pain in his world? It’s a question as old as Job.
Saint Francis spent almost half of his life on and in the mountains, and the other half he spent on the road entering and leaving cities. As Jesus walked up the mountain to pray, then descended and moved among the people, so did Francis and the early brothers, discovering, contemplating, and sanctifying new places, as they continued to walk beyond their own history, as do we if we learn to walk into and out of our own Assisi as pilgrims.
