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The Mary of Piety
Devotional prayer to Mary, the mother of Jesus, has always been the center-piece within Catholic piety. Among other things, those devotions have focused upon various Marian shrines, places where Mary
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Faith and a Time of Agnosticism
Why does our generation struggle with faith? Martin Heidegger once gave this answer: “We are too late for the gods and too early for Being.” What does he mean by
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Jesus’ Moral Loneliness
Therese of Lisieux was much photographed. Her sister, Celine, loved using a camera and took lots of photos of Therese. Many of these survive. And there’s an interesting element in
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Purgatory Revisited
“A common soldier dies without fear, Christ died afraid.” Iris Murdoch wrote those words. Among other things, theyunmask the simplistic notion that if one has faith and a clean conscience
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A Wisdom Born of Pain
John Powell once wrote a remarkable little book entitled, Unconditional Love, the story of Tommy, a former student of his who died of cancer at age twenty-four. Shortly before he
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An Invitation to a Deeper Virtue
Perhaps the most misunderstood text in all of scripture is the one where Jesus says to us: “Unless your virtue goes deeper than that of the scribes and the pharisees,
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The Value of Praying a Doxology
A friend of mine likes to tease the Jesuits about their motto: “For the greater glory of God.” “God doesn’t need you to enhance his glory,” he likes to kid
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Conservatism is a Good Place to Start From
Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine you’re a strip of litmus paper and then analyze the colours you turn as you fall into the various acids of life and religion. I
https://ronrolheiser.com/conservatism-is-a-good-place-to-start-from/
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Dark Nights of the Soul
When Therese of Lisieux entered the Carmelites at age fifteen, she tried to anticipate the difficulties she would face there. She knew that many would see this as the misguided
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The Kenosis of God
Last year, in a presentation at a symposium on “Being Missionaries to our own Children”, Michael Downey posed this question: How do we speak of God inside a culture that’s