Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because...
If God forgives us instantly and completely, then who are we to sulk in despair over our failures? If God finds no pleasure in condemning, then we have no right to find some sort of sadistic pleasure in self-contempt. To allow the sins of yesterday, or even an hour...
With the words “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” the community recognized the bond that had been established between them and God as revealed in Jesus. God did not stay distant from them, remote and isolated; rather, in Jesus, God chose to live with humanity...
Could the real pageant not be a play at all, but my lifeAs I take my gifts, my insecurities, my worriesTo the Christ Child, like the Magi took their gifts to the manger,And allow God to recreate within me a new life,A living pageant that does not end on Christmas Day,...
The image on the slide screen was cavernous and beckoning. As the gathering in the San Pedro chapel took in the translucent greens and blues of the watercolor, we heard its artist, Sister Doris Klein, C.S.A., offer these words: “In the cave of our hearts…in the fabric...
Often in discussions of prayer we confuse it with other valid aspects of any life in which prayer is functioning as it ought. And that is not helpful. In fact, it can result in prayer’s being replaced and omitted. We may confuse prayer with special states or...
There is no mode of life in the world more pleasing and more full of delight than continual conversation with God.
Think about your greatest fear. Consider how you would feel if your life required you to face what you fear the most every day. Ultimately, if you survived the test, you would discover that what you feared actually had no power over you, no power to harm you at all....
You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. …And you refuse to do it because you want to live longer… You’re afraid that you...
Twenty-five years ago one of my mentors told me that the truth that I was loved all the way through was the “brute fact of the universe.” I am now just beginning to believe it. Christianity is a love affair beginning with the gasp of astonishment with which all love...