Latest Articles
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NOTE: History and the Hail Mary
Its hard to believe how much history we run through when we say the Hail Mary. It began some thousand years ago when Christians took the brief greeting of the Angel Gabriel and added the name: Mary. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” (Luke 1:28). Some fifty years later, about 1050,…
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Good on Getting Old
It’s February and all the pretty white stuff on the ground keeps me inside and liable to reflect. I’m well past ninety-four years of life and I’m living with sixty-odd brother Jesuits whose ages are scattered over the eighties and seventies, two decides that I’ve already gone through. Being kept inside means ruminating about ,…
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Note: The World We Live In
Given AI, jet travel, always new antibiotics, and cell phones, we might think that because of all of this, human beings must surely be different from when I was born 94 years ago (before all of this). Not really. We still use words. We still need each other and one another. We still have struggling…
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Jesus Is Baptized with the Rest
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. He had walked a long way from Nazareth to the River Jordan where His cousin was baptizing. He had gone there completely aware that He would be though one with those professing themselves sinners in need of cleansing. He joined…
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NOTE: UPHEAVAL TOO MILD A WORD
We need to bring to God in prayer the condition of our nation and our world: upheaval might describe them. The condition of our nation: • Our second-term president is talking about “buying” part of a free nation and says the people will leave when he buys Gaza. • Here’s a national paper headline: Your employer…
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Note: It Turns Out
A few weeks ago, sixty-seven (67) people were killed in the District of Colombia (D.C.) in a collision between a military helicopter and an airliner. It also turns out that federal regulators of our air space knew that there was significant danger of collision over the District of Colombia. It also turns out that D.C….
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NOTE: The Real World
Given AI, jet travel, always new antibiotics, and cell phones, we might think that because of all of this, human being must surely be different from when I was born 94 years ago (before all of this). Not really. We still use words. We still need each other and one another. We still have struggling…
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When They Make Me Pope
The first thing I’ll do when they make me pope is write a brief letter recommending—strongly—that pastors replace the “beautiful crucifix” over the altar with an image of the Risen Christ, which may be pretty or not but represents the truly beautiful historical reality. That’s the trouble: the crucifixes above altars not only in the United States…
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Choose Your Classroom
When I was teaching at the old Jesuit High School in what is now downtown Dallas, my mother was teaching kindergarten in what is still Holy Name of Jesus school on the campus of Loyola University of New Orleans. My mother and I corresponded (well, she wrote a lot more and much better letters than…
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Complete Joy
It seems odd to me that the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth alive today feel that He wants us to mortify ourselves and suffer. We have plenty stories about how He was asked to pull men and women out of their suffering and how promptly He did it. Among the most striking is the story…