Monthly Archives: April 2006

EXCERPT:
Returning to the image of the loom, which is woven into today’s vocabulary, I have in mind the incredible phrase from the Book of Job: “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope. Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.”

Our days are indeed like a shuttle. Some years ago I met a women who woven cloth with a large loom. She showed me how it worked. In her practiced hands, the shuttle lashed swiftly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, while the loom packed the threads together. The cloth “grew” as it was woven, slowly, but surely. But the shuttle snapped back and forth with increasing speed as she found her rhythm and settled into it. Read More →

EXCERPT:
We need clear doctrine, clear prayers, and clear willingness to adhere to them on the part of her duly appointed pastors. Hopefully the ongoing project of preparing a new translation of the Missale Romanum will be a contribution, not an obstacle. Read More →

I am posting this at about "oh dark hundred" and, as it is posted, will be just about ready to catch a couple hours sleep before walking out the door to meet my ride for the airport. I am heading … Read More →

EXCERPT:
My instant reaction to this prayer is rather bittersweet. The Church’s shifting demographics in wealthy countries reveals that, while more people may be identifying themselves as Catholic, the percentage of Catholics going to Mass remains steady or is falling. This means that we are going backward. Also, in European countries which were once Catholic countries, such as Italy, the birth rate is far below replacement rate. Yet “Eur-Arabia” is swiftly muliplying. Contraception and abortion is killing off one dimension of the life of the Church. The forces of the “Prince of this world” prevail in some places. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Taking a page from St. Augustine of Hippo (+430), we the baptized who are the Body of the Mystical Person of Christ, the Church, are on a journey with the Lord, the Head of the Church, toward Jerusalem: the Jerusalem of our own passion and the new Jerusalem of our Resurrection. Christ made this journey so that we could make it and be saved in it. In our liturgy the one, whole Mystical Christ is on a Lenten journey. Each year in Lent Christ, in us, travels that road of the Passion, and we, in Him, travel the road marked out by Holy Mother Church and her duly ordained shepherds. We must unite ourselves in heart, mind and will with the mysteries expressed in the liturgy. Our passion, our road to Jerusalem, is in our examination of conscience and good confessions, our self-denial and works of mercy. Read More →