One of the most commonly-used words during the Advent season, as everyone looks ahead to Christmas, is “tradition.”
Day: December 10, 2014
Diocesan Choir at O’Connor Center for Festival of Lessons and Carols
MADISON — Preserving a long-standing tradition recently in doubt, the Madison Diocesan Choir returns to the Bishop O’Connor Catholic Pastoral Center Sunday, Dec. 21, for a Festival of Lessons and Carols, a joyful celebration featuring wind instruments and reaffirming the choir’s music ministry in service to the diocese.
Months ago, the choir and its director, Dr. Patrick Gorman, were in search of a new home, a daunting challenge. With plans to convert the former seminary into a housing development, the choir required not only a place to store its music, but one large enough for weekly rehearsals. The choir has more than 70 active members from parishes throughout the diocese.
Biking to Mary: a ‘good cause’
JEFFERSON — For the average UW-Madison student in his or her 20s, a bike ride from College Library to his or her apartment just off University Ave. is a little more than one mile. Getting from that Point A to Point B can seem like a long ride.
Multiply that ride by about 200. That’s what one man, along with friends and family, did this past summer as a way to get closer to the Blessed Mother.
Chris Pundzak is a 27-year-old volunteer at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse. For the second year in a row, he biked from The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians at Holy Hill in Hubertus, near Milwaukee, to the shrine in La Crosse.
People of faith can offer solutions
People of faith may provide some solutions to the unrest in our country over the deaths of civilians by police officers.
Like many others, I have been discussing these matters with people at home and work. We can understand the challenges faced by law enforcement in dealing with situations in their communities. Police officers are trying to protect citizens, but they can also find themselves in danger.
Making the holidays meaningful for everyone
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Q This may have been asked before, but I need some advice on how to manage holiday gatherings with someone who has dementia.
My mother lives with my sister. Mom has Alzheimer’s disease and my sister wants the entire family, all 25 of us, to gather at her home for Christmas.
I think it will be too hard for mom to be around all of us at the same time. My sister thinks we might not have another Christmas with mom so I don’t know how far to push.
(From a son in Sun Prairie).
Hildebrand and our relativistic age
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Postmodern relativism and deconstruction have produced, at the popular level a culture dominated by the “whatever” attitude, a bland, detached indifferentism to the good and the true.
How often have you heard someone say, “that’s perhaps true for you but not for me” or “who are you to be imposing your values on me?” or in the words of the Dude in The Big Lebowski, “well, that’s just like your opinion, man.”
Subjectivism in society
Is it not a commonplace today that the only moral absolute that remains is the obligation to tolerate all points of view? What this subjectivism has conduced toward is a society lacking in energy and focus, one that cannot rouse itself to corporate action on behalf of some universal good.
Reflection on physician-assisted suicide
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The prospect of a very attractive, recently-married young woman with a terminal illness facing excruciating pain and suffering as she dies is enough to move anyone.
A Christmas gift for suffering South Sudan
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The world’s newest nation is in big trouble. After more than 20 years of civil war between the southern and northern areas of Sudan, the southern part of that country on July 9, 2011, became the independent nation of the Republic of South Sudan.
But the situation on the ground soon looked like South Sudan had not been born, but instead was still suffering intense labor pains.
The many years of war brought not only much death but also drained South Sudan of valuable resources, leaving it an extremely poor nation.
All Saints Parish, Berlin, Christmas musical
BERLIN — For the second year in a row, everyone is welcome to attend the All Saints Parish, Berlin, Christmas musical called Twas the Night Before.
It takes place on Sunday, Dec. 21, at 3 p.m. at the Berlin High School Auditorium. All seats are reserved and tickets are $3.50.
All proceeds from the musical will be donated to the Berlin Food Pantry.
Reclaim the gift of Fear of the Lord
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| This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop. |
Dear Friends,
Last week I joined with a group of faithful men for their monthly time of prayer and spiritual reflection. With them I focused upon the seventh gift of the Holy Spirit, and I’d like to do the same with you here.
Hopefully you recall the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So many of us older folks have them memorized while unfortunately, some of the middle-aged and younger don’t even know that they have access to such gifts.
The gifts are: wisdom, understanding, council, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and Fear of the Lord. All of these gifts belong to the Christian first by way of their Baptism, and especially by the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Confirmation.
If we use them and count upon them, these gifts help to perfect virtues in us and aid us in living the moral life and in obeying divine inspiration in our life.
Fear of the Lord
While it’s likely that all of us could use a refresher on every one of these tremendous gifts, I want to focus on that seventh gift at the moment: Fear of the Lord. Perhaps the timing will seem odd, because we’re getting ready to commemorate the coming of God into the world as a tiny baby, but Fear of the Lord properly understood, dovetails perfectly with God’s plan for our salvation, and I hope to help you understand why.