The book of the Bible used the most in worship is the book of Psalms. I could never “sell” a workshop on the psalms so I disguised the topic by saying the workshop was about praying with the whole self.  Here is today’s psalm. Responsorial Psalm Ps 69:15-16, 30-31, 33-34 R. (14c) Lord, in your […]

A wonder of a bishop, the Ukrainian Catholic patriarch of Kiev, said that the great suffering of the Ukrainians made many of them more sensitive, more generous. But, he added with his dry humor, the sufferings did not have this affect on everyone. The liturgy prays that the we the church be spared sufferings because […]

The feast day honoring the Trinity observed in the Western Church (and considered redundant in the Eastern Church), has one helpful aspect. It is a reminder that God is not easily labeled a human image projected into the infinite, just somebody or something, made up out of what we know about human beings…God as old […]

Here are the numbers Monday to Saturday morning: 5:20, 5:40, 5:45, 6:15, 6:45, 6:55, 7:10, 7:30. They represent rising time, morning prayers, meditation, high Mass, thanksgiving after Mass [on our knees unless there was an extenuating circumstance like 'cancer of the spine'], “free time” [bed making], breakfast [still in silence and always silence in the […]

Sometimes people say, “Why should I pray? God knows what I need and has no need of my words.” But the words in the Jewish and Christian liturgies are the words of a story and we pray the story. Saying the blessing is praying the story. We bless God by telling God the divine story. […]

Fr. George Hunt, SJ, was the editor of AMERICA magazine when it gave the Campion award to John Updike as a Christian man of letters. Later, in his collected essays, DUE CONSIDERATIONS, Updike recommended to Hunt an essay on faith. The essay I remember very well…and Hunt reproduces it: But then, getting up to go […]