Month: November 2005

Contrast the affluence of most of us with the radical life of John the Baptist. Contrast Micky D’s and locusts. Tommy Hilfiger, Armani and Camel hair. Wouldn’t you like to meet the old chap aka ‘the Forerunner?’ What do you think he would say to us? If the fire-breathing old Baptist were to get a […]

Advent is also a time to reclaim the Mother of God for all Christians. Not a goddess, nor a mere vessel, she is the one who bore the Word. She is like the holy of holies in the Temple–container of the uncontainable God. As the Hymn says: O higher than the cherubim,more glorious than the […]

We are coming up on the new year in the Church, the Advent season. It seems somehwere in the 20th century, Montgomery Ward got St. Nick and in the process Advent was taken to the mall as well. So, instead of self-examination and meditation on the Incarnation and the triumphant second return of Christ, which […]

St. John of the Cross wrote about spiritual depression in his famed Dark Night of the Soul. He mentions that ‘consolations’ (warm spiritual experiences) are common among followers of Christ, but that God often removes them to train his followers to look for him and not for the consolations. In other words, spiritual experiences are […]

My Mexico trip brought the past and current worlds of Fr. Neo together. It was surreal. As I said below, I grew up in a billingual Pentecostal Church. In Guadalajara I met Anglican believers who were lively and mildly Charismatic in their worship. So, there I was, faced with the Spanish language and Pentecostalesque worship […]

While in Gudalajara, I noticed the great interest (maybe even obsession) with the supernatural. The hunger for Jesus was quite intense. However, in places (and faces) the spiritual darkness was palpable. It is fascinating to me that the darkness here in the US is a different kind of darkness. Spiritual hunger is not as present […]

My kids love this hymn: I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true, who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew. And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green; they were all […]