"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Every now and then I have readers email me directly. Here’s one I received earlier this week:
“Last week my Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion was saying, “THIS IS THE Body of Christ.” It struck me as wrong. Is this ad-libbing, embellishing, inappropriate, or no problem?”
In case anyone is interested, here was my reply…
Last week I shared links to two other blog posts which discussed the issue of Christians getting tattoos. Needless to say, there was quite a lively discussion on my Facebook page! In the discussion, quite a few of my Christian friends shared the stories behind their tattoos and, despite my personal dislike of tattoos, I found the whole things fascinating so I thought it might be a nice idea to do something of a follow-up post…
So, if you are a Christian and have a tattoo, please contact me. I’d invite you to send me a picture of your tattoo, together with a little bit of the story behind it. I’ll then collect them all into a post for next week 🙂
This week I’m leading Bible Study at St. Brigid’s, so once again I’m posting my notes for this Sunday’s Mass Readings…
This week’s Readings speaks to both the continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, focussing on the idea that morality flows from God, that living a holy life flows from imitation of God.
In the previous episode we began discussing the second book in The Chronicles of Narnia, which is called Prince Caspian. In this episode, we finish our discussion…
S2E27: “Caspian Continued…” (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast).
Time Stamps
In case you would like to jump to specific parts of the episode, click on the links below:
00:38 – Continued analysis of Prince Caspian
22:29 – Overall review of the book
27:00 – Surprise Haiku!
In the parish where I grew up it was understood that, upon receiving their First Holy Communion, boys were then eligible for training to become altar servers. I followed in this tradition and became an altar boy at the age of eight. Even after we changed parishes, every week I served on the altar and did so for many years. I continued to serve regularly until after I completed university and, even then, when I was back home visiting my family I would typically don my cassock and carry a candle on Sundays.
I loved being an altar server and I think that all parents should consider encouraging their sons to become altar boys. In this post I’d like to share my top ten reasons why altar serving is great…
Today is the final post in our series on on-line Catholic dating. It is written by my friend Matthew Grivich, author of the book Rational Faith…
As I mentioned in the first post, Catholic Match “how we met” stories are not helpful because they are more advertisements than anything and don’t really help single people. For this reason, I will give our “how we met” story and I’ll leave in a lot of the little details (and things that could have derailed the relationship). It gets to be a long story, but I would have valued these types of stories when I felt like I had no idea what I was doing.
Today’s “Quick Apology” comes from a conversation a friend of mine recently had with a Reformed Protestant. It’s actually a bit of a long response for a “Quick” apology, but oh well…
“I’ll concede that the case for the historical church being the Catholic church is very strong. However, the chosen people (the Israelites) were consistently disobeying God throughout history and eventually ended up crucifying Christ. Throughout history the chosen people abandoned God. What makes you think that the Catholic Church hasn’t done this or won’t do this?”
Here, the Protestant is admitting to many of the claims of the Catholic Church, but appears to be challenging the Church’s continued status as Christ’s Church, as well as calling into question her continued authority.
It must first obviously be admitted that sinners are found in the Catholic Church. After all, why else do you think I’m allowed membership?!. However, a few points should be made…
Israel certainly sinned over the course of Salvation History. However, would it mean that because of this, it would be better for a Jew or Gentile to abandon God’s people and “go it alone”? Of course not! If one left Judaism, thinking that this couldn’t possibly be the true religion due to the hypocrisy of some of their rulers and many its followers, then one would be making a huge mistake!
As Saint Paul said, “…to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs“ (Romans 9:4-5). The Lord had given to Israel many wonderful gifts for the sake of salvation. It would be crazy to reject these gifts and walk away!
However, we actually have an example in the Old Testament of when some members of Israel did just that. After King Solomon’s death, his son ascended to the throne (1 Kings 12) who was a complete tyrant. The northern tribes refused to follow him and this resulted in the division of the Kingdom: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judea in the south. This separatist movement received the condemnation of the prophets. Not only had they abandoned their rightful king, they had cut themselves off from the priesthood, the Temple and the sacrifices.
