Wednesday, April 11, 2018057One of the great titles bestowed by the church upon Mary Magdalene is “the apostle to the apostles.” According to the Gospel of John, Mary, still sorrowful on “the first day of the week” (John 20:1), is the privileged recipient of the first Easter message that Jesus’ body no longer rests in the tomb. After racing to Simon Peter...
Friday, March 16, 20180133From the cross, Jesus gives his followers a final instruction on how to read both the Scriptures and his own sacrificial death. Only the Roman soldiers crucifying him and the small ensemble of his followers, St. John and his mother among them, hear his anguished cry moments before he expires: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken...
Thursday, February 15, 20180397
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
Israel became a nation in the barren desert of the Sinai Peninsula. The formative experience of fleeing Egypt united them as a band of refugee-brothers, but nostalgia for their enslaved lives quickly overruns them at the first sign of hunger and thirst.
What Moses...
Friday, January 19, 2018063The Greek word scholē originally denoted a state of leisure or spare time, and gradually came to describe conversations held within a time free of specific duties. The word moved into Latin, and eventually was employed to define a group of people engaged in leisurely discussions, or even the place itself where those discussions were...
Thursday, December 14, 2017041
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
Sight is the most divine of our spiritual senses. In the beginning, “God saw all that He had made, and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31), and the human being is created to image God (Genesis 1:26-27). Because we are the only beings created in the image and likeness of...
Friday, November 3, 2017034St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante are the most famous among the many theologians who have speculated about the nature of Heaven. While they certainly could not speak from personal experience while standing on this side of death, they rightly emphasized that our perpetual vision of God must be based on our capacity to receive that infinite...
Thursday, October 5, 2017035
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
October is the month of the Rosary in the Roman Catholic tradition. Dedication to this devotion, and in particular its faithful recitation in October, is due largely to the victory of the Catholic Western powers over the Ottoman Empire at the naval battle of Lepanto on Oct....
Wednesday, July 26, 2017027
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
My noble efforts at maintaining a tranquil, stoic temperament fail miserably whenever I hear one particular response to the topic of reading the Bible. It comes in several variations, but they all seize on a common theme—or excuse. “Reading the Bible? C’mon, dude. I...
Thursday, April 27, 2017017The basilica of San Clemente in Rome features a stunning apse mosaic depicting the cross of Christ as a tree trunk bearing immense fruit in the form of circling vines and flowers. The radiant colors and decorative forms make visible an idea cherished by the early theologians of the Church: that the cross is truly the tree of life, from...
Friday, March 31, 2017015
By Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
Among the myriad treasures of Sacred Scripture, one of the most neglected has to be the Letter to the Hebrews. It receives relatively little attention in the liturgy, and I imagine few people would be able to recall any recognizable theme or passage from the book. Many might...
