Tag: Death

To Love God Above All

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Today we celebrate the memory of the Venerable Herman of Alaska, the patron saint of North America. There is so much that is praiseworthy in the life of this man of God that one hardly knows where to begin. He was an ascetic who dwelt as an anchorite in the forests from the time of his early childhood. He was a zealous missionary who, like the righteous Abraham, left his home and…

What Kind of Triumph Do We Seek?

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We celebrate today the Great Feast of the Triumphal Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Today Christ enters openly and boldly into the holy city, no longer in secret, no longer hiding Himself to forestall the fury of the Jews, for He knows that His hour to be glorified is now at hand. And so on this day He makes his entry into Jerusalem with glory — at least, in a certain…

When God Does Not Come

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We hear in today’s Gospel passage an account of two people coming to the Lord in desperation, each begging for His help in a totally hopeless situation. And it is this fact which is of the greatest importance: despite all evidence, and even in absolute defiance of simple common sense, neither of these two people despaired of the power of God to heal what no earthly skill or craft or knowledge could…

Beholding the Glory of God

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We celebrate today the great and glorious feast of the Transfiguration of Christ. On this day the Lord took three of His closest disciples – Peter, James, and John – up to the summit of Mount Tabor, where He revealed Himself to them in His divine and heavenly glory. St. Peter only one week earlier had, for the first time, openly confessed Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”…

The Coronavirus and the Cross of Christ

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We have reached today the midpoint of the Fast. Half of the struggle is behind us, and the second half still lies ahead. And seeing our weakness, seeing our faintness of heart and the ease with which we can tire and grow despondent, on this Sunday our mother the Holy Church mercifully offers us hope and refreshment, comfort and consolation. But the form which this takes is not at all what “common…

On Holy Week and the Way of the Cross

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The Forty Days of the Great Fast have now ended. We have once again been given a foretaste of the approaching Paschal joy in the raising of Lazarus the Four Days Dead. We have once more exulted together at the Triumphal Entry of our Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. And now we watch and wait (let all mortal flesh keep silence!) outside the Holy City, to behold the events of this Great…

The Long Road Home

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In the church hymns for this day we commemorate the expulsion of Adam from Paradise; he is vividly portrayed to us sitting outside the Garden of Eden, weeping for his great sin and for all that he has lost. But these hymns are often sung in the first person; for like Adam, all of us have sinned, all of us have been cast out by God, all of us weep for our lost homeland. But unlike Adam, we weep for what we have never known.

The Weeping of the Widow

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We have just heard the story of the widow of Nain, who wept by the bier of her dead son before he was resurrected by our Lord Jesus Christ. Often when I preach on a Gospel passage, I begin by reminding us to look for ourselves in the story being recounted in Sacred Scripture. And I think that there are exceedingly few among us who cannot identify with the widow of Nain,…

The Age of Desire (Anthropology of Antichristianity, Part 6)

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When the Lord was taken down from the Cross, the Cross remained on Golgotha, and then it was thrown into the pit that was in that place, where this instrument of execution was usually thrown, together with other refuse. Soon Jerusalem was razed and all of its edifices were leveled to the ground. The pit containing the Cross of Christ was also filled over. When the pagans rebuilt the city (the Jews…

“Love, and Do What You Want”

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In today’s Gospel passage, we hear the greatest definition of the Christian life ever given by anyone. One of Jewish lawyers asked our Lord: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And Jesus replied: "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” St. Augustine later summarized this answer even more starkly: “Love, and do what you want.”