Tag: gospel

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Let there be gratitude — and joy!

Dear Friends,

This past Sunday’s Gospel featured a story that we all know well. The minute the “Story of the Prodigal Son” begins, we can say, “Well, I know how this ends,” and instead of paying attention, our minds might wander to one of a thousand different things.

It’s an understandable temptation, but I hope you didn’t do that, because every time we hear that familiar reading, it should be something that hits us very concretely and powerfully, because it turns out to be about you and me. It turns out that the Lord wants to say something to you and me about that reading and through that reading each time, that He has never said before.

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Bishop Robert Barron

What precisely is the Gospel?

Some years ago, I was involved in a Catholic-Evangelical dialogue. One of our Protestant brothers challenged the Catholics in the group to articulate clearly what the Gospel is.

I knew what he was getting at: many Evangelicals pride themselves on the fact that they can succinctly sum up the Good News in a way that people find compelling and helpful, whereas many Catholics, it seems, get tongue-tied.

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Kevin Wondrash, Catholic Herald Staff

Lay movement celebrates anniversary at home and around the world

MADISON — On Saturday, March 7, Pope Francis met with more than 80,000 members of the Communion and Liberation lay movement who filled St. Peter’s Square in Rome and the boulevard leading to it.

It marked the 60th anniversary of the movement, which has the purpose of forming its members in Christianity in order to make them coworkers in the Church’s mission in all areas of society.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Surprising lessons from YouTube viewers

Just last month, my media ministry Word on Fire marked a milestone: 10,000,000 views on our YouTube channel.

This achievement fills me with gratitude both to God and to the many people who watched one or more of the videos I’ve produced. It also provides the occasion for me to reflect a bit on both the pitfalls and advantages of evangelizing through the new media.

An experiment

When we commenced our outreach through YouTube seven years ago, we did so in the manner of an experiment. YouTube had just come into being at that time, and it largely featured crude, homemade videos of cats jumping off the roof and babies gurgling for their mother’s camcorder.

I thought we should try to invade this space with the Gospel, and so I resolved to make short video commentaries on movies, music, current affairs, cultural happenings, etc.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

God will be generous in our obedience

Dear Friends,

As with most anniversaries and milestones, it’s hard to believe it was 15 years ago, this past Sunday, that I knelt on the floor of the Cathedral of St. Helena, with the Gospel book opened over my head, being commissioned and ordained a bishop.

In some ways, that morning in Helena, Mont., seems like an eternity ago, and in other ways, it seems like just yesterday.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

The Cross as part of our faith

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,

This past Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

This Feast Day takes place each year on the 14th of September and so, while it is a major feast day for the Church, it is often missed by those who do not attend daily Mass, or at least Mass on major feasts.

This year, however, we were particularly blessed to have the feast fall on a Sunday, and so important is the feast that it actually “trumps” the typical Sunday readings.

It is indeed an important day — so much so that it used to be followed by three Ember Days of prayer and fasting.

Why is it so important? It is not the feast of the Crucifixion of our Lord; obviously we mark that on Good Friday. And, in fact, each time we approach the altar for Mass, we represent the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, we recall His suffering, death, and resurrection; why have a special day just for the exaltation of the Holy Cross?

Because, in our Catholic faith symbols matter! We are a physical people, whose very bodies are destined to be glorified, and so the physical, tangible things of this world matter.

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Fr. David Wanish, For the Catholic Herald

Focusing on the plight of immigrants during Lent

“Forty days in the desert” describes Jesus at the start of his ministry and the Christian community during Lent.

For me, henceforth, it will also bring to mind migrants who make a dangerous journey through Mexico to the United States. I learned on a tour with the organization Witness for Peace that the trip for those who start in southern Mexico or Central America can take one to two months and often includes walking through treacherous stretches of desert.

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Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Pope’s Lenten message: Follow Jesus seeking out poor, sinners

Msgr. James Bartylla, vicar general of the Diocese of Madison, distributes ashes on Ash Wednesday in the chapel of the Bishop O’Connor Center, Madison. Ash Wednesday is observed on March 5 this year. (Catholic Herald file photo)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Courageously follow Jesus in seeking out the poor and sinners and in making difficult sacrifices to help and heal others, Pope Francis said in his message for Lent, which begins March 5.

Christians are called to confront the material, spiritual, and moral destitution of “our brothers and sisters, to touch it, to make it our own, and to take practical steps to alleviate it,” the pope said in his Lenten message.

Saving the world will not come about “with the right kind of human resources” and token alms, but only “through the poverty of Christ,” who emptied himself of the worldly and made the world rich with God’s love and mercy, Pope Francis said.

Focus on Christ’s poverty

The pope’s message focused on the theme of Christ’s poverty, with the title: “He became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich,” from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians.

Pope Francis said he chose the passage to explore what St. Paul’s references to poverty and charity mean for Christians today.

There are many forms of poverty, he said, including the material destitution that disfigures the face of humanity and the moral destitution of being a slave to vice and sin.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Church needs ‘dynamic’ fraternal correction

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 in my column I talked a lot about conscience, and I’d like to pick the theme back up, as our Gospel from this past Sunday touches on that very same message.

Conscience should always drive us toward perfection. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48),” is the parting exhortation from our Lord in this past Sunday’s Gospel. A correctly formed conscience never says to you, “How little can I do and still call myself a Catholic?”

Conscience doesn’t make us minimalistic

Conscience does not open the door to be a minimalist. It is not a tool for our saying, “How can I give myself permission to do the minimum?”

Conscience opens the door to perfection, to the heroic, to the maximum, because the well-formed conscience serves as that truth-seeking radar, by which we choose to follow the law of the Lord.

As I said, we very much need to spread the word about conscience, and the readings of this past Sunday really help us with one detail of how to do that.

If we’re going to spread the good word about conscience, that means we’re going to have to correct others, especially our brothers and sisters who are Catholic. We know that this is not easy.

What is easy, when we seek to inform the consciences of others, is to seem as if we are judging the person themselves. We have to avoid that judgment of the individual, but we must not hesitate to help them, by offering the truth about their actions.

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