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Of Virtue and Sin
There’s an axiom which says: Nothing feels better than virtue. There’s a deep truth here, but it has an underside. When we do good things we feel good about ourselves. Virtue
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Of Winners and Losers
Our society tends to divide us up into winners and losers. Sadly, we don’t often reflect on how this affects our relationships with each other, nor on what it means
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Welcoming the Stranger
In the Hebrew Scriptures, that part of the bible we call the Old Testament, we find a strong religious challenge to always welcome the stranger, the foreigner. This was emphasized for two
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Embittered Moralizing
One of the dangers inherent in trying to live out a life of Christian fidelity is that we are prone to become embittered moralizers, older brothers of the prodigal son,
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God’s Power as Powerlessness
The French novelist and essayist, Leon Bloy, once made this comment about God’s power in our world: “God seems to have condemned himself until the end of time not to
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Acedia and Sabbath
Early Christian monks believed in something they called, Acedia. More colloquially, they called it, the Noonday Devil, a name that essentially describes the concept. Acedia, for them, was different from ordinary depression in that it
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Taking Our Wounds to the Eucharist
Recently a man came to me, asking for help. He carried some deep wounds, not physical wounds, but emotional wounds to his soul. What surprised me initially was that, while he was
https://ronrolheiser.com/taking-our-wounds-to-the-eucharist/
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Orthodoxy, Sin, and Heresy
Recently, while on the road giving a workshop, I took the opportunity to go the Cathedral in that city for a Sunday Eucharist. I was taken aback by the homily.
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My Favorite Books of 2016
So much of life, particularly today, constitutes an unconscious conspiracy against reading. Lack of time, the pressure of our jobs, and electronic technology, among other things, are more and more
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Incarnation – God is with Us
For many of us, I suspect, it gets harder each year to capture the mood of Christmas. About the only thing that still warms are hearts are memories, memories of