Anyone who has read with interest the recent articles in these pages on the life of Venerable Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, O.P. would do no better than to read his fascinating and edifying Memoirs.
Several readers have met at the Cathedral Parish in Madison weekly to discuss what inspiration we find for the New Evangelization from Father Mazzuchelli’s writing. I share these gleanings.
The first reading for Mass on the first Sunday of Lent this year, taken from Genesis 3, deals with the creation of human beings and their subsequent fall from friendship with God.
Like a baseball coach who compels even his veterans to re-learn the basics of the game every spring, the Church invites us, during the spring training of Lent, to re-visit the spiritual fundamentals. And they are on no clearer display than in this great archetypal story.
As a parent, one of my favorite rituals is the evening story time routine with my two girls. They are four and two years old, and sometimes getting them to quiet down takes a few prayers. With patience, they always settle down and look forward to story time as much as I do.
After they’re both in their pajamas, each of them is allowed to pick one book and one story in their Bible. We read the books first and then the two Bible stories.
It amazes me which stories the girls seem to love most and which ones they don’t seem to identify with yet. We’ll talk about the bible stories and I’ll do my best to explain God’s lesson in a way they can understand.
Editor’s note: This week we begin publishing the column “Word on Fire” by Fr. Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire Ministries, which reaches millions of people by utilizing the tools of new media to draw people into or back to the Catholic Faith. Father Barron is the creator and host of Catholicism, a groundbreaking, award winning documentary series about the Catholic faith. The series has aired across the country on PBS and EWTN and has been seen and broadcast in parishes, universities, schools, and media outlets throughout the world. The documentary received a Christopher Award for excellence. Father Barron and Word on Fire also released the documentary Catholicism: The New Evangelization in 2013.
A classic characterization of Jesus is that he is priest, prophet, and king. As priest, he sanctifies, that is to say, he reestablishes the lost link between divinity and humanity; as prophet, he speaks and embodies the divine truth; and as king, he leads us on the right path, giving guidance to the human project.
You might say that, as priest, he is the life; as prophet, he is the truth; and as king he is the way.
CNN recently profiled the case of a woman named Marlise Munoz, who was both pregnant and brain dead.
Its report noted that Mrs. Munoz was “33 years old and 14 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child when her husband found her unconscious on their kitchen floor November 26. Though doctors had pronounced her brain dead and her family had said she did not want to have machines keep her body alive, officials at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, argued state law required them to maintain life-sustaining treatment for a pregnant patient.”
One of the arguments against raising the minimum wage in the United States is that many of those in minimum wage jobs are young workers, either in their teens or early 20s.
Such workers, the argument goes, either lack experience, or in the case of workers under the age of 18, live at home and don’t rely on their income to meet their basic needs.
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For quite some time I have had an interest in the plight of the homeless. I have read about it, prayed over it, and have done small things to help.
But feeling that I could, and should, do more to make a difference, I concluded that living as a homeless man — at least for a very brief period — was the best way to understand what it’s like to have no place to call home.
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In 1982, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald newspaper conducted a survey to name the new bridge that connected Dubuque, Iowa, with Wisconsin and the Diocese of Madison.
The name “Mazzuchelli Bridge” received the most votes, perhaps because of ways Venerable Father Samuel Mazzuchelli influenced early Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. It was then submitted to the Dubuque City Council, but the council named the new bridge the Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge instead.
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Editor’s note: We are pleased to welcome back our popular “Grand Mom” columnist, Audrey Mettel Fixmer. We published her last column in November of 2012. This week she explains some of the challenges she has faced in the past 14 months. We hope that Audrey will continue to share her wisdom with us as often as possible. God bless you, Audrey!
Our wonderful editor, Mary Uhler, phoned me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that so many of my faithful readers inquired about me that she felt obliged to offer an excuse for my absence.
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Q I have always considered my parents to be intelligent and capable of making good decisions, but I wonder if they may be taken in by a new acquaintance who is also in the investment business.
They recently invested in a project that is “going to be huge,” according to the investor. My parents were told not to share too many details because they are a few of the “special people” who were allowed in on this.
It sounds so fishy to me, but they think this is the next big thing but they can’t tell me what it is. Am I over-reacting? (A concerned son in Evansville).
