Category: Church

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A Cloud of Witnesses

Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Hebrews 12:1-4

 

In this world we have our troubles
Sometimes lonesome, sometimes blue,
But the hope of life eternal
Brightens all our hopes anew.

(Chorus)

I don’t want to get adjusted
To this world, to this world,
I’ve got a home that’s so much better,
I want to go to sooner or later,
I don’t want to get adjusted to this world!

– From the song “I Don’t Want To Get Adjusted”, attributed to Sanford Massingale. This quote is from the version that the folk group The Weavers recorded and sang live in the early 1950’s.  Many recorded versions of this song exist today. 

The terms “adjusted” and “well-adjusted” may be used less frequently now than they were a generation or two ago, but the meaning these terms express remains an ideal in psychology. One dictionary definition for “well-adjusted” is the following: “A well-adjusted person is reasonable and has good judgment. Their behavior is not difficult or strange”. Such a person is seen as socially acceptable and popular, a model for others to imitate. Continue reading “A Cloud of Witnesses”

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Building Up The Body Of Christ

Corpus Christi (A)

 

Though the Easter season officially ended two weeks ago at Pentecost, the Church has added a kind of epilogue to it by celebrating feasts on the two Sundays that follow Pentecost.  Last week, we celebrated Trinity Sunday, which gave us the opportunity to focus even more directly on the triune God.  This Sunday, we celebrate Corpus Christi, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, which shifts the focus to how the Lord builds up the Church.

Usually, when we reflect on the feast of Corpus Christi, we focus on the Sacrament of the Eucharist itself.  We call to mind how it is the Real Presence of the Lord among us.  We have Eucharistic processions and Adoration.  We do very well to do these things, and more. Continue reading “Building Up The Body Of Christ”

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Truth and Consequences

Pentecost (A):  I Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13

 

Many years ago, there was a popular game show called Truth or Consequences.  A contestant in this show would be asked a difficult trivia question, which the contestant would usually get wrong.  Getting the question wrong had consequences! The contestant would then have to participate in a potentially embarrassing stunt.

One unintended effect of this show’s title was to affirm that truth has consequences.  If something is true, certain conclusions necessarily follow.  For example, if we claim that Jesus of Nazareth is true God as well as true man, and that His Passion, Death and Resurrection are, together, the defining moment of human history, that claim has consequences.  Our lives cannot be like the lives  of those who do not claim this.  Our perception of reality, our ways of thinking and acting, must be fundamentally transformed by this claim.  If not, then we do not really believe that our faith in Jesus Christ is true.  It may be only a slogan.  It may be only political spin.  But it is not truth unless it has real, visible, perceptible consequences for us. Continue reading “Truth and Consequences”

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Catholicism And…

One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favor of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all distort the image of reality that is reflected in our minds. Grace does not completely correct this distortion all at once: but it gives us a means of recognizing and allowing for it. And it tells us what we must do to correct it. Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right. ― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Recently we learned that Australia’s High Court overturned a lower court’s guilty verdict against Cardinal George Pell on the charge of sexual abuse.  The reactions to this acquittal from Catholics in the United States were all over the map.  The website of the journal First Things posted articles praising this exoneration of an innocent man who was the victim, as they argued, of an anti-Catholic lynch mob.  On the other end of the spectrum, the National Catholic Reporter published articles and editorials lamenting how yet another high-ranking Church official got away with sexual abuse, and quoted sexual abuse victim advocates who all agreed that justice was not served here. Continue reading “Catholicism And…”