Practical advice for living a more Spirit-filled life
One of the elements of Christ’s Passion that struck my students this year, particularly as they watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, was the stark aloneness of the Apostle John. Of all Christ’s inner circle of chosen disciples, John alone witnessed the events of the redemption. When asked to brainstorm why John might…
“Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” (John 11:40). In last weekend’s Gospel of the raising of Lazarus, we heard Jesus speak these words to Lazarus’ sister Martha, reminding and assuring her of His promise that He is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). And…
The priest giving our Community’s retreat one summer exuded dignity and solemnity. Weighed and weighted were each word in his talks, each gesture of his Mass, even each step as he strolled the Motherhouse grounds. And yet — was I mistaken? — I detected a subtle twinkling in his eyes. No matter the heft of…
“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asked the crippled man by the pool of Bethesda “who had been ill for thirty-eight years” (John 5:5-6). After so many years of sickness, this man seemed to have gotten used to his illness and his feeling of helplessness. His response to Jesus indicated he wished others would…
Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence depicts a type of psychological brutalization practiced during 17th-century Japanese persecution of Christians, in which priests were told that their apostasy would save other captured Christians from torture. At the novel’s climax, a Jesuit missionary, who has already apostatized under these conditions, tells a fellow Jesuit now given the same alternative:…
St. Catherine of Siena once wrote, “People have faith and hope only in what they love.” Are people able to see through our lives that we are radically in love with Our Lord? Or have we allowed ourselves to be deceived into thinking, “Yeah, I believe in Jesus, I’m a good person,” without really letting…
