I’m just going to do some linking here.
Fr. Robert Barron is a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Francis Cardinal George Chair of Faith and Culture at University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary (I didn’t know that position existed until I wrote it just now). When I was a seminarian at St. Joseph College Seminary (Loyola University Chicago), Fr. Barron came to speak on occasion. He was always insightful and well-spoken, one of my favorite guest speakers.
He has a blog (www.wordonfire.org) and recently wrote an article for the Catholic New World (newspaper for the Archdiocese of Chicago) on the Hitchens brothers, Christopher and Peter. The former is a renowned atheist, and the latter eventually came to espouse Christianity. The two have sometimes debated the subjects of religion and God’s existence in public presentations. While searching for Fr. Barron’s article, I encountered this video which hits all of the same points, sometimes verbatim. It’s six minutes long, and thought-provoking.
Namely, he hits the point which seems so obvious that I am always surprised when intelligent atheists (Christopher Hitchens, in this case) miss it: God is not the cause of society’s ills or tragedies. When God . . . → Read More: Oh Brother.
I came across an online story discussing unsealed documents in the diocese of San Bernadino California regarding sexual abuse by priests. As a Seminarian I cannot explain to you the overwhelming grief and pain it brings me every time I read a story like this. There truly are no words to describe the deep pain I feel every time I read of hear of these stories. There are also no words for the anger that I have for those who were so inept at handling the situation.
When I read stories like this I honestly ask myself and God “How do any of us stay in the Church?” It literally is by the grace of God that faith can endure in these times.
I’m also sick of the apologetics that come with this situation. They make me grow tired and weary. How do we defend something that is so utterly indefensible? How can we, with straight faces and upright hearts, try to discuss statistics, reasons, psychology, and the like? And furthermore – how can some people out there actually get angry with the media? Get angry with those who write and talk about this issue?
Are we being treated fairly? Certainly not. . . . → Read More: Death by a thousand cuts
This is like real-time breaking news!
Adam and I are having a G-conversation as I type. That is, Google Chat, for all you tech-unsavvies.
We’re talking about home, the soul’s desire for wholeness. I have just said that one has to believe there is only an endless search for home, if you’re looking for it in this life, and no soul finds it until he or she comes to Heaven.
(Salvation)
This has been a subject most inspiring and terrifying, for me. Leaving inspiration [ecstatic-ness] aside as somewhat self-explanatory, it is terrifying to imagine this: You come to your final moments, and you have the fortune (good or ill is subjective) to see it coming. Your last breath, and you will feel your spirit leave your body.
But will you? Is there a spirit in you, that will then leave when your body dies?
Or is that it? [Black] Do you close your eyes, and like an insignificant movie, you are never animated again?
(Life everlasting)
I’ve had to remind myself to believe this, or else my trust is vastly inconsistent with my thoughts. And, so often, I am wanting for the kind of joy one might expect of a . . . → Read More: Home
St John of the Cross in his masterful writing discusses the importance on being dispassionate towards things, experiences, thoughts, and ideas that seem holy. It can be a difficult thing to grasp, but it is ultimately an understanding that God is infinite, and everything that we think, experience, and learn can help us come to terms with this ultimate nature of God, but can also eventually become a hollowed, graven thing that can be a stumbling block to our growth in grace. I wrote the following in a spat of inspiration from this:
You must not confuse something that brings you to God as God Himself. For the God who created that something out of nothing cannot be that something, but rather will use that something for you to explore his infiniteness beyond something.
What then, shall we despise that something for it is not God? May it never be! God constrained himself to the finite to bring us the reconciliation needed to be infinite with him. We should be thankful for these somethings, but must be willing to loosen our grasp on them at any moment, because what we should always be eagerly desiring to grasp is He, Himself . . . → Read More: Dispassionate somethings