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THE BEST LENTEN PENANCE What are you giving up this year for Lent? In previous years I’ve denied myself ice cream, chocolate, coffee… the “usual.” This year, I’m feeling that it’s time for a real challenge. How about giving up smack-talk, even when people deserve it? How about giving up being impatient with idiot drivers? … Continued

SurRENDer Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God (Joel 2:13). With Lent beginning a bit later than what seems usual this year, I feel like the Lord has been providing me with  lots of time to “prepare.”  Not just in terms of our parish offerings this Lenten season, which … Continued

Sacred Spaces, Sacred Faces In his 1981 book Addicted to Mediocrity – 20th Century Christians and the Arts, then-evangelical Franky Schaeffer satirized the arts and media of the so-called ‘religious right’ movement of the 1980s. The target of Schaeffer’s acerbic wit was predominately fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism. And although not in his crosshairs, Catholics were … Continued

EXTRA Ordinary Time When we look at the Catholic liturgical calendar, Ordinary Time takes over a majority of the year. Green seems to take over the whole calendar, with only bits of pink, purple, and gold thrown in. Sometimes red, too! Seasons of Advent, Lent, Easter, or Christmas all seem to stand out more than … Continued

When I read today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, for some reason I thought of video games.I’m not sure why, since I don’t play them very frequently these days. But stick with me on this. There is a term from video games that has entered the common vocabulary in recent years:“leveling up”. In many games, … Continued