Men of the Beatitudes

Become who you are: freedom (#3)

February 5, 2007

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. ” —Pope John Paul II Becoming who we are requires free and responsible choices, decisions, and acts. A cat IS who he/she is. There is no question of choice, decision, free action. A human person co-creates himself/herself [...]

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Become who you are: balance (#2)

February 4, 2007

Balance, rightly understood, is both essential and challenging to achieve. For us poor pilgrims, it’s a continual task. In #1, I described the beauty of the point-counterpoint of “become who are are”: being and becoming. These two poles of our lives require constant and prayerful awareness. Paraphrasing St. Francis of Assisi, we ask: “Who am [...]

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Become who you are: personhood (#1)

February 3, 2007

“He plunges into the depths of reality whenever he enters into his own heart; God, Who probes the heart,(7) awaits him there; there he discerns his proper destiny beneath the eyes of God.”—Gaudium et Spes #14 John Paul II was a protagonist of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960′s and often referred to [...]

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“God is love”: the arresting strangeness of Christian faith

January 29, 2007

I’m re-reading Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est, just beginning. But even the opening paragraph strikes me as telling: that God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–IS love. He/They not only love; He/They ARE love . . . in Their eternal communion of self-giving. St. Francis de Sales taught that we must be meek and lowly of heart, [...]

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Benedict, fervently committed to the renewal of the sacred liturgy

January 15, 2007

As a young child, Benedict was captivated by the beauty and mysterious power of the sacred liturgy. His favorite liturgical memory is of lights flooding the Church on Easter Sunday, after the vacant and haunting darkness of Holy Saturday. (It was on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927 that he was born–considered by his parents a [...]

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A Beautiful Act of Consecration

October 22, 2006

Taking an appropriately “Sunday Appriciation” hiatus from the publishing blogs about the PNBA trade show, I just wanted to mention that my daughters Rachel and Maire and I were very privileged Friday evening to attend the Mass and consecration ceremony for Regina Dibb. who has pledged herself to the vocation of Consecrated Virginity in the [...]

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Pier Giorgio Frassati inspires Olympian

February 18, 2006

I’m not sure how Debra (my wife) learned about Rebecca Dussault. But, the flag of interest was Pier Giorgio Frassati, the “men of the eight Beatitudes” (John Paul II); Rebecca and her family have asked Pier Giorgio (who died of polio at age 24 in 1925) to accompany them on their journey to Turin. In [...]

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Family Roundtable (from February 4)

February 12, 2006

Family Roundtable Notes February 4, 2006 Saturdays over the evening meal are our family’s occasion to reflect on a possible “call within a call” to be and become a family—to discover the inner truth (what John Paul II called “subjectivity”) of our family . . . its culture, its vocation, its mission. Our decision to [...]

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