The three classical spiritual practices that the Church urges us to embrace during Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Category: Word on Fire
What is ‘synodality’ and walking the synodal path?
It was a great privilege for me to participate in the Synod on Young People in the fall of 2018.
The maintenance of harmony in the Church
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Some years ago, my friend Msgr. Francis Mannion wrote an article concerning the three essential features of the Eucharistic liturgy — namely, the priest, the rite, and the people.
When these elements are in proper balance, rightly ordered liturgy obtains.
Further, from these categories, he argued, we can discern the three typical distortions of the liturgy: clericalism (too much of the priest), ritualism (a fussy hyper-focus on the rite), and congregationalism (a disproportionate emphasis on the people).
A prayer at the tomb of St. Paul
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I write these words on the airplane taking me home from my first visit as a bishop ad limina apostolorum (to the threshold of the apostles).
This is the pilgrimage, required by canon law of every bishop, to pray at the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul and to meet personally with the successor of Peter.
In an earlier column, I wrote of the extraordinary visit to the tomb of Peter and an even more extraordinary conversation with the Galilean fisherman’s successor, Pope Francis.Spending time with my spiritual father
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I write these words from the Eternal City of Rome, whither I’ve come with my brother bishops from Region 11 (California, Nevada, and Hawaii) for our ad limina visit.
This is a regular and canonically required trip to pray at the limina apostolorum (the threshold of the Apostles), the tombs of Ss. Peter and Paul, and to meet with the successor of Peter.
Yesterday was the first official day of the pilgrimage, and it was extraordinary indeed.
1917 and remembering who we are
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I saw the film 1917 on the vigil of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, and I think there’s a connection between the movie and the liturgical celebration.
Bear with me.
First, as everyone who has seen it remarks, the editing and cinematography of 1917 are so astounding that it appears to unfold completely in real time, the result of one continuous shot.
Film should be called The One Pope
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The new and much-ballyhooed Netflix film The Two Popes should, by rights, be called The One Pope, for it presents a fairly nuanced, textured, and sympathetic portrait of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) and a complete caricature of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
This imbalance fatally undermines the movie, whose purpose, it seems, is to show that old grumpy, legalistic Benedict finds his spiritual bearings through the ministrations of friendly, forward-looking Francis.
But such a thematic trajectory ultimately does violence to both figures, and turns what could have been a supremely interesting character study into a predictable and tedious apologia for the filmmaker’s preferred version of Catholicism.
The Crown and the ‘primacy of grace’
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Like, I daresay, most of the English-speaking world, these past couple of years I’ve been watching episodes of The Crown, the beautifully filmed, marvelously written program on the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II.
The series deals with the psychological dynamics within the royal family as well as with the cultural changes and political challenges that the Queen has faced in the course of her long reign. But what has been, at least to me, most surprising has been the insightful and sympathetic way in which it has addressed issues of faith.
Especially in the first season, we saw the fairly frequent conflicts between Elizabeth’s devotion to her family and her role as head of the Church of England.
In season two, there was a deeply affecting episode on the visit of Billy Graham to the UK in the mid-50s. We saw that, despite reticence regarding the American evangelist on the part of some in the British establishment, the Queen found his preaching illuminating and uplifting.
A talk on the Hill: A calling for justice
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This is the second article in a two-part series about Bishop Robert Barron address to an audience of senators, representatives, and Capitol’s Hill staffers at the Library of Congress.
Next, I referenced the strange and illuminating account in the sixth chapter of Isaiah regarding the call of the prophet. Isaiah says that he saw the Lord in the temple surrounded by angels crying “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
The Hebrew term here is kadosh, which carries the sense of “other.”
God is source of existence
God is not one being among many, not one true thing among true things; rather, he is the source of existence itself, the unconditioned ground of all that is — and this entails that he is greater than all of the particular projects and desires that customarily preoccupy us.
A talk on the Hill: A calling for justice
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This is the second article in a two-part series about Bishop Robert Barron address to an audience of senators, representatives, and Capitol’s Hill staffers at the Library of Congress.
Next, I referenced the strange and illuminating account in the sixth chapter of Isaiah regarding the call of the prophet. Isaiah says that he saw the Lord in the temple surrounded by angels crying “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
The Hebrew term here is kadosh, which carries the sense of “other.”
God is source of existence
God is not one being among many, not one true thing among true things; rather, he is the source of existence itself, the unconditioned ground of all that is — and this entails that he is greater than all of the particular projects and desires that customarily preoccupy us.