As we well know, two criminals were crucified on either side of Jesus, as narrated in Luke 23: 37-43.
Tag: salvation
Be friends with the saints
It’s quite a blessing that we can both read about canonized saints (or even blesseds, venerables, and so on) or read their own words.
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.
Resurrection: salvation and commissioning
What was the aim of the resurrection experience? The entire book of the Acts of the Apostles gives us the aim of the resurrection experience.
Work out our salvation by how we live
“Are you saved?” is a classic evangelical question which we have probably all been asked once or twice. Those posing the query usually view salvation as a specific event, the precise moment when they gave their lives to Jesus and experienced his forgiveness.
A gentleman told me once that he was saved at a Billy Graham crusade in 1978, which for him was a powerful spiritual transformation. As Catholics, we may fumble for an articulate answer to the question of salvation, which is a sign perhaps that our understanding of this central reality of faith is more nuanced.
Holy Week is gift from Holy Spirit for our salvation
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| 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,
It is hard for me to believe that this coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, and yet, here we are!
I bring this up because I want to remind you that the most important liturgies of the Church, culminating in the great Easter Vigil, begin this coming Sunday. It is the most important time in the Church year, and I encourage you to be actively engaged in it.
Holy Week begins
We begin, of course, with Palm Sunday (or Passion Sunday), which is the official start of Holy Week. And Holy Week builds from there.
Called to be salt and light for all
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This is the second in a two-part series on salvation history, with the goal of understanding the role we play in this history. In the first part, Bishop Barron discussed how the creation narrative in Genesis teaches us that our role as human beings is to “praise God on behalf of all creation” and that the Fall is man’s loss of this “priestly identity.” In this second part, he covers the three other acts in the “drama” of salvation history: The Formation of Israel, the Coming of the Messiah, and the Church.
Beginning with the covenant with Abraham, God shapes a nation according to his own mind and heart; he teaches a particular tribe to worship him aright, to be his priestly people. His ultimate intention is to use Israel for the instruction of all the nations of the world.
Christian culture is collapsing, warns Dr. Ralph Martin
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| Dr. Ralph Martin gives a talk on “Mercy and Mission: Living as a Catholic in Challenging Times” on April 20 at the Bishop O’Connor Catholic Center in Madison — part of the semi-annual St. Thérèse of Lisieux Lecture Series. (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash) |
MADISON — “Seventeen hundred years of Christian culture is collapsing before our eyes,” Dr. Ralph Martin warned in his talk, “Mercy and Mission: Living as a Catholic in Challenging Times.”
Dr. Martin was the guest speaker for the semi-annual St. Thérèse of Lisieux Lecture at the Bishop O’Connor Catholic Center in Madison on April 20.
He is president of Renewal Ministries and an associate professor of theology and director of Graduate Programs in the New Evangelization at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit.
He is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which are The Urgency of the New Evangelization: Answering the Call; The Fulfillment of All Desire: A Guidebook for the Journey to God Based on the Wisdom of the Saints; and ed? What Vatican II Actually Teaches Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization.
Living with challenges
“We’re living in something like a big apostasy, whether it’s the [Great] apostasy or not, I don’t know,” he added. He cited the decreasing numbers in Mass attendance, vocations to the priesthood and Religious Life, and Baptisms and other sacramental practices.
The “Great Apostasy” Dr. Martin referenced is one of the events St. Paul said has to happen before Christ comes again — a “a turning away of the faith on the part of those who once had faith.”
Another event is a time of unrestrained evil and lawlessness.
Pope Francis wants you to read Dante
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This year marks the 750th anniversary of the birth of the great Catholic poet Dante Alighieri. Michelangelo reverenced Dante, as did Longfellow, Dorothy Sayers, and T.S. Eliot. In fact, it was Eliot who commented, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”
One of Bob Dylan’s finest songs, “Tangled Up in Blue,” contains a reference to Dante: “She opened up a book of poems, handed it to me/It was written by an Italian poet from the 13th century/And every one of those words rang true and glowed like burning coal/Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul.”
What precisely is the Gospel?
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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.