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The Tearing of the Temple Veil
There are so many haunting lines in the passion narratives. Who of us, for instance, is not stirred in the soul when the passion story is read in church and
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The Desert of Gethsemane
There’s a remarkable expression in popular language that describes one of the most painful moments within Jesus’ life, his “agony in the garden”. The phrases describes his inner struggle the
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The Desert – the place of God’s Closeness
In her biography, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day shares how, shortly after her conversion to Catholicism, she went through a painful, desert time. She had just given birth to her
https://ronrolheiser.com/the-desert-the-place-of-gods-closeness/
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Facing our Demons in the Desert
We live lives of tortured complexity. Inside each of us there is both a saint and a sinner and enough complexity to write our own book on abnormal psychology. Our
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The Desert: A Place of Preparation
One of the great ironies in life is that, too often, success brings more unhappiness, jealousy, and destructiveness than joy, blessing, and harmony into the world. Daily our newspapers carry
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The Ashes of Lent
We begin the season of lent with ashes on our foreheads. What is symbolized by this smudging? Perhaps the heart understands better than the head because more people go to
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Post-Modern Nihilism
Nihilism has a curious variety of faces. Generally we think of it as some gloomy, philosophical ideology within which God does not exist, nothing means anything, and suicide is explored
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In Defense of Chastity in a Post-Chaste Culture
Allan Bloom, the famed educator, with no religious agenda whatsoever, once suggested that lack of chastity is, singularly, the biggest reason why there isn’t a stronger passion for life among
https://ronrolheiser.com/in-defense-of-chastity-in-a-post-chaste-culture/
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Colour and Wisdom in God’s Face
If you were to construct a composite of God’s face, how would you picture this? What features should go into this face? Should God look like Mother Teresa or Alanis
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A Lonely Place from which to Pray and Speak
Robert Coles once wrote a fine biographical essay on Simone Weil. In it, he coined a beautiful phrase to describe a quality which made her so extraordinary and which also
https://ronrolheiser.com/a-lonely-place-from-which-to-pray-and-speak/