When we bind unto ourselves the strong name of the Trinity, let us likewise bind unto ourselves the names, the faces, the bodies, the Christ made incarnate again through the Spirit as we live the Gospel in service to all.
Read more
Author: Alan Hommerding
The Fruit of the Spirit: A Pentecost Novena
It is important to note that St. Paul speaks of one fruit of the Spirit, not many different fruits. This fruit has different sections, or segments, like a citrus fruit, similar to the way that the novena itself is truly one large prayer.
Read more
Is Being a Christian a Vocation?
Each year, as we enter Holy Week, I inevitably recall two individuals for whom I continue to have a great amount of admiration. Both were RCIA participants, and both—a few days before the beginning of the Paschal Triduum—declined to be baptized, and left the process.
Read more
Brief Book Review: God’s Good Earth
This book is for anyone who understands that we are living in a moment of, as the foreword expresses it, “planetary crisis,” and wishes to proclaim, pray, and sing with texts that acknowledge this.
Read more
The First Temptation of Ministry?
I got to wondering to what extent “workism” has infected my own life, work, and ministry.
Read more
Monday Morning Confessions
Even with as many ministerial miles as I have in the rear-view mirror, there’s still much progress to be made.
Read more
Of Deck Chairs and Semantics
For those of us who focus our ministry in the area of liturgy, it can be tempting to think that what is occurring at this moment in regard to the sexual abuse crisis and cover-up has little, if anything, to do with us.
Read more
Monoeucharistitis: The Long-Term Effects
Vatican II did not envision “liturgy” and “Sunday eucharist” to be identical terms.
Read more
O Come, Instruction Manual
There is a temptation in these post-Baptism Sundays to view our liturgical work as something of a breather between our “real” work during the Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter seasons.
Read more
What Did Mary Know?
For us as liturgists and musicians, a principle to recall and observe in the preparation of Marian liturgies is that “Mary always stands with the saved.” I also like to state it in a less elegant manner: in the economy of salvation, there are ultimately only two categories … God and not-God.
Read more