Mark Twain, the writer, reportedly once earned five dollars per word. Someone playfully wrote him, “Mr. Twain, here is five dollars. Please send me your favorite word.” Mark Twain wrote back, “Thanks!”
Thanksgiving also is one of God’s favorite words. The word Eucharist, the center of Catholic life, means thanksgiving.
Sometimes I ask […]
It didn’t take […]
As nature decorates the hillsides with the beautiful autumn leaves, our thoughts turn to the harvest.
No mere artist can model the natural hillside of trees in arrangement and color, nor the bounty that feeds all creatures.
God is revealing himself to people and gives us abundant reason in which to see, honor, and be grateful for the order in nature.
As we behold this autumn of 2010, let us stop to praise God not only for the beauty we see in nature but also for his providential care through crops — corn, soybeans, squash, pumpkins, and all — each of which has a color, form, and purpose.
About two and a half years ago, I posed a very similar question here in the Catholic Herald, and it is time we revisit this question.
Let’s get straight to the point. Recent stories throughout the world on the Catholic Church and even local interactions with the secular media make one wonder if it is worth the Church continuing to work at maintaining relationships with the traditional media or whether it would be more effective to direct our time and energies in different and non-traditional avenues.
The more campaign seasons I experience the more grateful I become to the people who invented the “mute” button on my remote control.
It seems as more and more money is poured into election campaigns, the greater the number of negative advertisements that offer little to voters beyond appeals to their anger, fear, and resentment. And voters respond by tuning out and staying home.
November invites us to reflect upon last things.
It especially invited Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, to do so. On August 30, 1996, he learned that he would probably die of pancreatic cancer. He prayed that God would give him strength to complete his final book The Gift of Peace. God did. Cardinal Bernardin finished the book on All Saints Day, on November 1, 1996. He died 13 days later.
Our nation faces many challenges and our bishop has called for two days of prayer on Monday, Nov. 1, (All Saints Day) and Tuesday, Nov. 2, (All Souls Day).
Never before in our country’s life, which was built on the family, has the sanctity of the family, of life, and of marriage — one man and one woman — been so endangered.
“If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
World Mission Sunday, organized by the Propagation of the Faith, is a day set aside for Catholics worldwide to recommit themselves to the Church’s missionary activity through prayer and sacrifice. In 2010, World Mission Sunday is celebrated on October 24.
Annually, World Mission Sunday is celebrated on the next-to-last Sunday in October. As described by Pope John Paul II, World Mission Sunday is “an important day in the life of the Church because it teaches how to give: as an offering made to God, in the Eucharistic celebration and for all the missions of the world” (see Redemptoris Missio 81).
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| Olivia Knier |
It’s hard enough to practice your faith these days, it’s sometimes even hard to do the bare minimum of attending Mass each Sunday.
How could people possibly learn to LOVE their faith?
It’s possible: here’s how.
