Holidays and Holy Days
Here you will find musings related to Advent and Lent, Christmas and Easter along with reflections prompted by holidays like Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, and the onset of summer. It’s also a place for thoughts on Holy Days and related topics like the communion of Saints and the Sacraments. Posts are pictured with the most recent first. Look for season-related series or start with one of these popular reflections:
- 5 Thanksgiving Psalms to Pray This Week
- 40 Days in the Word: 3 Ways to Add Scripture to Your Lenten “Diet”
- Praying with the Penitential Psalms
- Find Peace This Advent
- The Jesse Tree: An Advent Tradition for the Whole Family
How would your life be different if you read the Bible every day — or if you turned to it as often as you do your smartphone? Pope Francis asked that question and had this to say: “If we had the Word of God always in the heart, no temptation would be able to estrange us from God and no ...
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Let’s “come into the Word” today by doing a little visio divina — reflecting on a painting of the Word-made-flesh. It’s getting close to Christmas, and I don’t know about you, but my brain is too full to read another thing. There is something about a quiet gaze that speaks to my heart right now. I’d like to share a ...
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In the winter of 1510, the merchants of Riga, Latvia, hauled a tree into the center of the marketplace. They decorated it with roses, symbol of the Virgin Mary. They danced around the tree in celebration of the Christ-child’s birth, and then they set it alight in a blaze of glory. That was the first Christmas tree, as far as ...
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Have you ever heard of “foreboding joy”? That’s what Brene Brown (in The Power of Vulnerability) calls it when we prepare for the worst even when things are at their best. Foreboding joy. I know it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I’ll bet a lot of people feel something like it right now. Christmas is just ten days ...
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Wake up! It’s time to make our way toward Bethlehem. + + + + + + + “Stay awake! … be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” — from Luke 24:37-44, Gospel for the 1st Sunday of Advent Year A + + + + + + + Imagine what that was ...
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It’s no accident that National Bible Week coincides with Thanksgiving. Its roots are in the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, when radio reports of the attack were alternated with Scripture readings to encourage the nation. Later, FDR proclaimed the week of Thanksgiving to be National Bible Week for all America, in gratitude to the Lord. Since then, every US President ...
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Father. Son. Holy Spirit. Why does it matter that God is three-in-One? Why do we celebrate this day? It doesn’t help me to think about a three-leaf clover, or of H20 as water, ice and steam. I still can’t wrap my head around it. I want to know first why it matters to my life. So I start with what ...
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It’s one thing to know something in your head. It’s quite another to feel it in your bones. I had that experience recently in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Dr. Edward Sri, who led our pilgrimage, had told us in advance what to expect: the grand central basilica, built over the graves of early Christians; the long colonnades stretched out ...
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Reading the end of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, the part where he lists everyone he wants to greet, I was struck by verse 13: “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine” (NABRE). Is that one woman or two? The English Standard Version, while not as literal, gets across what most commentators think he meant: ...
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