My next “Faith Perspectives” column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch appeared just in time for Christmas, a reminder (quoting Pope Francis) that “Thou Shall Not Steal” is about more than just not taking what doesn’t belong to us. You can read my column below or online here: http://bit.ly/2rQMm6U …
Tag: Christian
Choosing joy is not a call to blindness, to ignoring those things we would rather not see. Rather, it is a call to see our lives and world with new and joyful eyes of faith and then set out to help bring about real change, whether serving one person or helping to reform an institution in need of healing from the inside out. …
As the Catholic Church faces its future and works to rebuild the faith and trust of its faithful, we all need to ask ourselves a question: Are we standing in the right place? …
Pope Francis recently acknowledged the “shame and repentance" of the Catholic Church's failure to act on decades of sexual abuse by clerics against our young people. He stated emphatically that the Church “showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them." Like many Catholics, I appreciate his words, but they are not enough. …
The power of Easter Saturday is that it teaches us to wait and watch, to sit quietly and contemplate what it all means and how it will change our lives. This post includes a brand-new song that encourages us to do just that, I hope, written just a few weeks ago with my friends John Caravelli and Phil Cooper. John brought the song to us nearly complete and together we all made it into something new. That’s what happens when …
Last night I had the good fortune to attend a lecture at Washington University (where I work) by Father Michael Perry, the American Franciscan friar who is the minister general of the Order of Friars Minor. Sponsored by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics, Fr. Perry spoke on this theme: "What Do Francis of Assisi and Francis of Buenos Aires Have in Common? A 'Franciscan' Perspective on the Common Good." My write-up here is by no means …
From time to time, as both a writer and a spiritual director, I get asked for book recommendations. So on this cold and snowy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday in the U.S., I stayed inside and scoured my shelves for ten books I would highly recommend, books that are both well-read and well-loved, books that have pointed me in different ways to the movement of God in my life, inspired me by their beauty and story, or have somehow …
As we begin a New Year, perhaps the best resolution we can live out is the resolve to answer the call that has been given to us, and that begins by learning to pay attention to our lives and to those things that give us life and joy. For in those moments, we find God and begin to hear a call. …
Why study the past? Why look at an ancient piece of rock or an early Wright Brothers Flyer? Beyond our curiosity and perhaps our own deep desires to somehow change the world, perhaps the answer lies in something a bit deeper. For those who profess a faith in a loving and creating God, perhaps it lies in our yearning to find a connection between our world, its innovators and their creations, and our faith and the God who creates and …
Somehow, it’s January 1 once again. We have made yet another trip around the sun. I’m not one for making public declarations of my resolutions (although I do need to step up my walking and watch my portions once again…) but today I return to a question that might lead to a good resolution for all of us to consider on this first day of a New Year: How do we begin each day? …