In the Gospels, she says, “Do whatever He tells you.” In Medjugorje, she snickers and says, “You do you.”
Forty-seven thousand times.
Category: The Catholic Weekly
God Almighty in the crumbs
If God is so great, eternal and omnipotent and omniscient and all, why the heck does He care about a few ounces of processed animal protein? What difference could it possibly make? What kind of infinite deity even notices stuff like that? And how in the world can you say that God is love if He cares about hot dogs?
The X-Plan for salvation
Beep beep. I am here to tell you that, sometime after that seventh time (or maybe after the seventy-times-seventh time) a light bulb will click on in that dopey son’s head. After being rescued without comment one more time after time after time after time, that son is very likely to decide on his own that this is no way to live, and he’d rather face the jeers and yucks of his stupid friends than the quiet patience of his father one more time.
Not because he’s scared of his father, but because he’s not. Not because his father is mad at him, but because his father loves him, and it finally feels like it’s time to live up to that love.
Daddy is an innocent man
Next thing he knew, he was lying in a pool of his own blood, and in his ear was the voice of his beloved wife, softly whispering, “How do you reload this damn thing?”
Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.
photo credit: Kaptain Kobold 13/05/2008 (Day 2.134) – Godzilla Family via photopin (license)
Why do we hold onto grudges?
Keeping grudges is such an odd thing to do. No one wants to be angry, resentful, and unhappy, surely, any more than we’d jump at the opportunity to keep a sticky, stinky, snarling vermin in the house for a pet. And yet we do keep it and cherish grudges so ardently, sometimes for decades. Why?
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly here.
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Image: Orin Zebest via Flickr (Creative Commons)
The samurai martyr and the sex abuse scandal
Where do we go when we as a church are caught persecuting ourselves? How do we respond when the aggressor lives within our walls, and when the criticisms of our church are accurate and true? When the enemy of the faith is a hostile outsider, our course seems clear: we fight back, to defend ourselves and our church. But this is a different matter.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly of Australia.
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Image: detail from woodblock by Hokusai(?)
I so imperfect
You can start over even if you’re not sure God loves you. You can start oven even if you’re not sure He should.
And you don’t have to run. You can shamble over resentfully. You can sidle in doubtfully. You can skulk in with fear, doubt, despair, or even rage. As long as you go because you’re acknowledging that things are not good as they are, then that is good enough. It may not feel like it is enough, but that is what Christ has promised.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image: photo credit: trepelu toes (detail) via photopin (license)
Tell me again why you won’t sing at Mass
Maybe your church is different, but in all my life, I’ve found something to dislike about the music at Mass. When I was little, the freshly post-conciliar church was still struggling in the smothering arms of liturgical silliness, and the music followed suit (a clown suit, to be specific). Then there was the priest who seemed to be trying to swallow the microphone; the warbling cantor who thought she was a soprano despite all evidence; the crazy Poles with their hymns that sounded good, only they didn’t have any vowels in them; and then of course the banjos. Oh, my lord, the banjos.
Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.
Image: An angry woman: 16th C. misericord, the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame (Collégiale Notre-Dame), Le Puy-Notre-Dame, Anjou, France, photo by Spencer Means via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Not lost forever: Miscarriage, grief, and hope
We have reason to hope that even those little, innocent ones who never had eyes to see the light of day or the waters of baptism will be welcomed into heaven as well, not smuggled in the pockets of a low-ranking god, but recognised and called by name back home by their Father who made them.
Still, we are human. It is not wrong to look for physical reminders of abstract truths.
Undeserving, unremarkable, unreliable, and beloved
Odd for the magi to know enough to prostrate themselves, in their jewels and flowing robes, before the seemingly unremarkable but truly extraordinary son of Mary; odder still, odd times a billion, for that Son to prostrate Himself for us, who are truly unremarkable.
Why? Why would He do this?
Because, to Him, every last one of us is that child who is unlike any other child. Each one of us is cherished like the “little man” who is adorable just because he enjoys eating eggs, or sweet beyond compare just because he has learned to blow kisses, like billions of other babies. To Christ, each of us is that special one, that cherished child, that singularly beloved one who makes his parent’s heart swell with affection.
Read the rest of my latest post at The Catholic Weekly.
Image: detail of photo by Andreĭ Osipovich Karelin, Public Domain