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A Parable of Grace
Piet Fransen wrote many important books, but he will always be most remembered for giving us a wonderful parable that runs something like this: Once upon a time there lived
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Moral Loneliness
In her book, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, Ruth Burrows makes an interesting comment on Therese of Lisieux. Looking at photographs of her, Burrows points that there is a quality of
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Finding God in Community
Some years ago I attended a symposium on religious experience. A variety of speakers made presentations on how they tried to experience God. One woman, a professor of religious studies,
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Beyond Ideology
Speaking to a group of theologians in Chicago recently, Cardinal Francis George offered this critique: “Liberal Catholicism is inadequate in fostering the joyful self-surrender called for in Christian marriage, in
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The Mystical Body
“I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping
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The Grace in Creativity
In his recent novel, Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje creates a character named Ananda. Ananda’s wife had been brutally murdered in the civil war in Sri Lanka and Ananda is trying
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The McVeigh Execution
In his masterful book, Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie picks up on a passage from the diaries of Captain Cooke. Cooke had landed on one of the Polynesian Islands and befriended
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Praying Lauds and Vespers
One of the things asked of us by adulthood itself, and more especially by our baptism, is that we pray for others. Like the high priests of old, we need
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Living Beyond our Crucifixions
Every dream eventually gets crucified. How? By time, circumstance, jealousy, and that curious, perverse dictate, somehow innate within the order of things, that insures that there is always someone or
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Eucharist as Vigil
In her novel, The Underpainter, Jane Urquhart describes a particularly painful time within the life of a woman named Sara. Sara’s life is at a crossroads. A long-standing relationship has