Category: Ars Praedicandi

Sometimes we have spiritual ear blockage, an inability to hear God speaking through unfamiliar, sometimes accented voices that sound an internal alarm about some potential enemy rather than another child of God.

This silent night could be no more than a quaint moment in which we offer congratulations to a young homeless couple occupying a handsome crèche with only one child and no Misha, and no other orphans to be seen. Or it can be a vocational plunge that commits us to allow the child to be born in us again.

From deep want, experiences of abundance. From profound sorry, the potential for delight. From isolating loneliness, the emergence of community. From impenetrable darkness, the promise of an eternal dawn.

by Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin Eugene Lowry is a favorite homilist, especially celebrated for his somewhat subversive approach to preaching. [1] Lowry has argued that

In the spirit of Mack the turtle maybe it is time for Catholic Christians metaphorically again to burb.

Apocalyptic end times … and the Johnnie football game.

To inject new meaning, even vitality into this crucial commandment, what if we replace the over-used language of “love” with a vocabulary of reverence?

Today’s healing story that serves as a bookend to this section of the gospel paralleling the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida is Mark’s capstone on two chapters of vocational commentary.

We don’t allow axes at baptism.