Tag: donald

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Bishop Donald J. Hying

Surrendering out of love

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Meditating on the Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, is always a source of great spiritual fruit for me.

We see Jesus alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, facing His imminent Passion and death, praying that this cup of suffering pass Him by.

Jesus is so anxious and distressed that He sweats drops of blood, struggling to surrender to the will of the Father and the mystery of the cross.

Radical filial obedience wins out, as Jesus utters His fiat, “Let your will be done, not mine.”

When Christ arises from this prayer, He moves forward with determination, arousing the sleeping apostles, facing Judas and the approaching mob, ready and willing to drink the cup of suffering to the very dregs.

In the Gospel passion narratives, once Jesus has made His surrender in Gethsemane, He embraces the terrible details of His trial, torture, and death with a peace, acceptance, and love that is truly divine.

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Fr. Donald Lange

Celebrating Lent as family

Lent is the Church’s primary penitential season. It is the season of conversion when we seek to become more Christ-like by choosing a Lenten penance which helps us to renew our Baptismal promises at Easter with a deepened faith.

The three traditional practices of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. A genuine commitment to these practices leads to a deepened awareness of God and conversion of the heart. Since the family is the domestic Church, in this article I will focus on some ways that we can live Lent as a domestic family. Some of these ways may also apply to the extended family and the Church family.

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Fr. Donald Lange

Observing the week of prayer for Christian unity

The theme for the 2021 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18 to January 25) is “Abide in my Love. You shall Bear Much Fruit.”

This theme finds its origin in John’s gospel (cf. John 15:5-9). In Jesus’ time, important people often shared what was important to them in a farewell discourse. In chapters 14-17 of John’s gospel, Christ’s farewell discourse shows that unity is important to Him.

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Bishop Donald J. Hying

Christmas message from Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison

This painful year of 2020 has dramatically revealed our vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and mortality. It has also shown the resilience and generosity of the human spirit. So many things that may have seemed so important a year ago matter very little now. Other realities, like faith, prayer, family and friends, health, and ultimately God stand in sharper focus as the bedrock of our existence. This year will be a different sort of Christmas, as we pray for those who died this year, those who are ill and those who heroically serve them.

We will forego many of our Christmas traditions this year, but the central truth remains.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered into our broken and sinful world as a vulnerable baby to rescue us from sin and death. In our poverty and frailty, we can most profoundly relate to the Christ Child, who is born among animals and adored by shepherds. How easy it is to romanticize Christmas; the reality was far different. The advent of God is marked by poverty, obscurity, and danger. God quietly slips in through the back door, unbidden and unnoticed, but here with us. This overwhelming divine love is the cause, meaning and destiny of our human existence.

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Bishop Donald J. Hying

How to vote according to our Catholic faith

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Many faithful Catholics have asked me to offer some direction regarding conscience formation and the moral aspect of the many issues facing us as a nation, as we approach this year’s presidential election.

We would all agree that this election has a contentious and angry divisiveness that we have not seen in our lifetimes.

This is due, in part, to the personalities, policies, and factions in play, and it certainly has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic and social unrest (I believe that there are other, more significant and fundamental reasons for the growing tension in our society, but that’s a topic for another time).

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