miniZibaldone

The shepherds grasped this in that night. They were among the marginalized of those times. But no one is marginalized in the sight of God and it was precisely they who were invited to the Nativity. Those who felt sure of themselves, self-sufficient, were at home with their possessions; the shepherds instead “went with haste” (cf. Lk 2:16) From the homily The Child who is born challenges us: he calls us to leave behind fleeting illusions and go to the essence, to renounce our insatiable claims, to abandon our endless dissatisfaction and sadness for something we will never have. It will help us to leave these things behind in order to rediscover in the simplicity of the God-child, peace, joy and the meaning of life. Let us allow the Child in the manger to challenge us, but let us also allow ourselves to be challenged by the children of today’s world, who are not lying in a cot caressed with the affection of a mother and father, but rather suffer the squalid “mangers that devour d...

From Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh   Dear Theo, ...Do you know an American magazine called 'Harper's Monthly'? There are wonderful sketches in it, which strike me dumb with admiration, among others 'Glass Works' and 'Steel Works,' all scenes from factories; and also sketches from a Quaker town in the olden days, by Howard Pyle. I am full of new pleasure in those things, because I have a new hope of making things myself that have soul in them. I should love to make, sooner or later, after some more study, drawings for illustration. Perhaps one thing will follow from another. The point is to continue to work.... Evacuation by Pyle Letter of Introduction by Pyle Men of Iron by Pyle Perfect Christmas by Pyle Quakers by Pyle Surprised by the Hero of Seventy Fights - The Good Lord James of Douglas (Howard Pyle)

Politics is one of the highest forms of charity. Great politics. And in that I think that polarization does not help. On the contrary, what helps in politics is dialogue. —Pope Francis

Mercy cannot become a mere parenthesis in the life of the Church; it constitutes her very existence, through which the profound truths of the Gospel are made  manifest and tangible. Everything is revealed in mercy ; everything is resolved in the merciful love of the Father.... A woman and Jesus meet. She is an adulteress and, in the eyes of the Law, liable to be stoned. Jesus, through his preaching and the total gift of himself that would  lead him to the Cross, returned the Mosaic Law to its true and original intent . Here what is central is not the law or legal justice, but the love of God, which is  capable of looking into the heart of each person and seeing the deepest desire hidden there; God’s love must take primacy over all else. This Gospel account,  however, is not an encounter of sin and judgement in the abstract, but of a sinner and her Saviour . Jesus looked that woman in the eye and read in her heart a desire  to be understood, forgiven and ...

Patience in our work, in our sufferings...The Kingdom of God grows and what must we do? Guard it. Grow through hope and guard that hope. Because we have been saved through hope. From the audience The Kingdom of God is not a ‘show’ religion: one that is always seeking new things, revelations, messages … God spoke through Jesus Christ: this is the last Word of God. The other one is like fireworks that lit you up for a moment and then what is left behind?  Nothing. There is no growth, there is no light, there’s nothing: just an instant. And we have been tempted many times by this entertainment religion of seeking things that are extraneous to the revelation, to the meekness of the Kingdom of God that is among us and which grows. For this is not about hope, this is about the desire to have something in our hands. Our salvation comes from hope, the hope of a man who sows the seed or the woman who makes the bread, mixing yeast and flour: a hope that grows. Instead, this artificial...

Christians are not tired and lazy in awaiting the final encounter with the Lord, but they go to encounter Him every day, recognizing His face in that of the many individuals who ask for help. From the audience Today we reflect on this word of Jesus: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me” (Matthew 25:35-36)...  [L]et us not fall into the trap of withdrawing into ourselves, indifferent to the needs of brothers and concerned only about our interests. It is precisely in the measure in which we open to others that life becomes fecund, societies re-acquire peace and individuals recover their full dignity. And do not forget that lady, do not forget that migrant who stank and do not forget the driver whose soul was changed by the migrant.   [full text]

We are being asked not to tire of keeping the key message of the faith front and centre: the Lord is risen.  Nothing is more important;  nothing is clearer or more  relevant than this.  Everything in the faith becomes beautiful when linked to this centrepiece. From the homily It is by loving that the God-who-is-Love is proclaimed to the world: not by the power of convincing, never by imposing the truth, no less by growing fixated on some  religious or moral obligation.  God is proclaimed through the encounter between persons, with care for their history and their journey.  Because the Lord is not an  idea, but a living person: his message is passed on through simple and authentic testimony, by listening and welcoming, with joy which radiates outward.  We do not  speak convincingly about Jesus when we are sad; nor do we transmit God’s beauty merely with beautiful homilies.  The God of hope is proclaimed by living out the  ...

Inferno by Dante Alighieri  Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri  Paradiso by Dante Alighieri  By What Authority Robert Hugh Benson  Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes  The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman The Portal of the Mystery of Hope by Charles Peguy The Five Wounds of the Church by Antonio Rosmini  Hamlet by William Shakespeare  Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare  Kristin Lavransdatter I: the Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset

What Every Woman Knows James Barrie A Choice of Christina Rossetti's Verse  Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead Anne Morrow Lindbergh  The Normal Child and Some of His Abnormalities C. W. Valentine  Restless Pilgrim: Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan Scott Marshall  Without Feathers, Getting Even, Side Effects Woody Allen By What Authority Robert Hugh Benson  The Way of the Bull Leo Buscaglia The New Jerusalem G. K. Chesterton  The Monk's Tale Kathleen Hughes  Great Choral Works Nicholas Kenyon  Charming Billy Alice McDermott An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine John Henry Newman  Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson Home Witold  Rybczynski  The Globalization Myth Alan Shipman The Stories of Muriel Spark Vasilii Rozanov and the Creation Adam Ure   Ursa Major: A Study of Dr. John...

In fact, sometimes our exhaustion is caused by having put our trust in things that are not essential, because we have distanced ourselves from what is really valuable in life. The Lord teaches us not to be afraid to follow Him, because the hope we place in Him will not be disappointed. From the audience Jesus projects to His disciples a path of knowledge and of imitation. Jesus is not a teacher who imposes on others with severity burdens that He does not carry: this was the accusation He made to the Doctors of the Law. He addresses the humble and little ones, the poor and the needy because He Himself made Himself little and humble. He understands the poor and the suffering because He Himself is poor and tried by sorrows. Jesus did not follow an easy way to save humanity; on the contrary, his path was painful and difficult. As the Letter to the Philippians reminds: “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (2:8). The yoke that the poor and the oppr...

The more we allow ourselves to be taken up by this love, the more our life will be renewed. We should say with all our being: I am loved, therefore I exist! —Pope Francis

Sun.Star Cebu's  Carvajal: "In Aid of" OF COURSE, extrajudicial killings by scalawags in the police force, as Sen. Leila de Lima is passionately crusading against, and extrajudicial killings by drug lords and other lords, as she surprisingly is not crusading against, not as passionately anyway, have both to be stopped. Such killings simply have no place in the nation of laws that we are. It is not a matter of course, however, that Senate investigations can stop these killings. These investigations are conducted by design and intent for nothing more than to aid legislation. Thus in the past these have often turned out to be platforms for grandstanding by legislators in aid of their re-election. From her experience as justice secretary, Senator de Lima should already know what law, if any, is needed to be passed to help stop extra-judicial killings (by all and not just by the police) without having to waste government time and money on endless but ineffective pro-forma ...

In collaboration with CEC (The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture). Participants: Mary O’Callaghan, Public Policy Fellows at the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, USA; Orlando Carter Snead, Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, USA. On occasion of the conference, screening of a video-interview with Jean Vanier, Founder of the Community L’Arche. Introduced by Maurizio Vitali, Journalist.

Upon entering the gate of Jesus, the door of faith and of the Gospel, we can get out from worldly attitudes, bad habits, by selfishness and by our own closures. When there is contact with the love and mercy of God, there is a real change. And our life is illuminated by the light of the Holy Spirit: an inextinguishable light! From the angelus He leads us into fellowship with the Father, where we find love, understanding and protection. But why is this door narrow? One can ask. Why is it narrow?  It is a narrow door not because it is oppressive – no, but because it asks us to restrict and limit our pride and our fear, to open ourselves with humble and trusting heart to Him, recognizing ourselves as sinners, in need of His forgiveness. For this [reason], it is narrow: to contain our pride, which bloats us.  The door of God’s mercy is narrow but always wide open, wide open for everyone! God has no favorites, but always welcomes everyone, without distinction.  A door, th...

How is it possible to experience work as a free subject who doesn’t depend on circumstances, but can face them head on? What is the meaning of work?

In defense of the ‘staycation’ of Pope Francis Austen Ivereigh, August 18, 2016 John Allen recently laid out three good reasons why Pope Francis should take a break during the burning Roman weeks of ferragosto:  for the sake of the wider Church, for the sake of his subordinates, and for his own health. Although it seemed a little unlikely that it should be, of all people, Allen — the Stakhanovite of the vaticanisti — giving such advice to the pope, the reasoning was unarguable. But I want to question the assumption that Francis cannot be taking a rest because he has not taken a vacation. We tend to assume that a change is as good as a rest, that getting away to hotels in mountains or by the sea breaks with our routines and obligations and therefore revivifies us. And that can be true. But there’s another part of the story: not just the stress of travel (the delayed flights, the clogged roads, the mediocre hotel that doesn’t look anything like it did online), ...

From Communio Journal [full text]

Maria has suffered so much in her life. It makes us think of these women, who are suffering so much. We ask that the Lord to take them to Himself and liberate them from such bondage. From the angelus The Lord looks down on the humble to raise them and we heard this in Mary's song of the Magnificat. And that song reminds us, in particular, of the women overwhelmed by the weight of life and the drama of violence, the women who are slaves of the arrogance of the powerful, the little girls forced into inhuman work, the women forced to surrender themselves in body and spirit to the greed of some men. May the beginning of a life of peace, of justice, of love, come as soon as possible for them, waiting for the day when they may finally feel gripped by hands that do not humble them, but with tenderness raise and lead them along the path of life, to heaven.  The Assumption of Mary is a great mystery that concerns all of us, our future. Mary, in fact, precedes us on the path of those...

Mathletics John Barrow

In carrying out its mission in the world, the Church needs the help of the Holy Spirit to avoid being deterred by fear and calculation, to avoid becoming used to walking within secure borders. From the angelus The fire of which Jesus speaks is the fire of the Holy Spirit, the living and and active presence within us from the day of our Baptism. It is a creative force that purifies and renews, it burns all human misery, all selfishness, all sin, transforms us from within, regenerates and makes us capable of loving. Jesus desires that the Holy Spirit may blaze like fire in our hearts, because it is only from the heart that the fire of divine love will flourish and advance the Kingdom of God. If we open ourselves totally to the Holy Spirit, He will gift us the audacity and fervor to proclaim to all Jesus and his consoling message of mercy and salvation, on the open seas.  The apostolic courage that the Holy Spirit kindles in us, like a fire, helps us to overcome walls and barri...

If I Live to be 100 Neenah Ellis  Excerpt from chapter 3 "Mona Breckner: 'I Tried to Do My Part'" Now her many nieces and nephews and their many children look in on her regularly, celebrate holidays with her, call her on the phone.      "They're my family now and they're very, very precious to me," she says seriously. "One niece feels as if I were her mother. We're very close."      She is around young families enough to have a strong opinion about what's wrong with the American family today.      "I think that women are not taking responsibility for family life as my parents did. My mother had a great deal of influence on my life, and I never could thank her enough for the feeling that she raised me with —the sharing feelings that I have about everybody. I think there's something lacking today. I think it's partly because the mother's attention has been pulled aside by the suffrage deal and the...

Philippine Star  "Untangling traffic" Emergency powers are being sought for President Duterte to speedily address the crisis that is the traffic mess in Metro Manila. Almost every day there is a reminder  of that emergency: traffic jams along most thoroughfares except Sundays and holidays, commuter trains so packed because of limited capacity and the Metro Rail  Transit breaking down, sometimes several times in one day.  These days the traffic jams have been aggravated by rutted roads as asphalt pavement again disintegrates during the rainy season. Yesterday a rutted stretch a mere  two meters long on the northbound lane of Quiapo Bridge tied up traffic from the Manila City Hall as vehicles were forced to slow down.  This problem is again becoming increasingly common throughout Metro Manila. Even as Congress deliberates on emergency powers for the President to deal with the  traffic mess, perhaps the firm hand of the Duterte administration can demand...