Saturday, November 28, 20200178Christians look to the light of Christ, the true light that knows no darkness or extinguishing (see John 1:4-5), to irradiate the gloom of their own suffering. Our efforts to purify the weak and fluttering flame of our heart from the ravenous cravings of selfishness, lust, and greed dim the light we radiate to others, and can bring us to...
Saturday, October 31, 20200126The prophet Isaiah surely knew he was introducing a shocking concept when he communicated a message of the Lord beginning with the words “Thus says the Lord to His anointed Cyrus” (Isaiah 45:1). The shock is not that the prophet refers to a king as the messiah, but rather that this particular king is not even an Israelite. Cyrus the...
Thursday, October 1, 2020088Among the treasures contained in our monastic hours of prayer, none is more precious to me than Compline, also known as Night Prayer. Its Latin name, Completorium, identifies it as the concluding communal prayer of the day, chanted in the evening twilight or, in the winter months, when the sun has already set.
Tuesday, September 8, 20200152The Swiss theologian Karl Barth is the author of a line that has always fascinated me: in the realm of nature, “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God” that we possess. I would like to explain why I think he is absolutely correct.
Friday, July 17, 20200158Contemporary readers of St. Paul criticize him for his apparent tolerance of slavery (see Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-25; Titus 2:9-10). Given the specter of slavery and racism in our nation’s past (and, alas, the present), we wish that Paul would have spoken more forcefully, from our vantage point, against the institution. Yet we...
Friday, May 29, 20200266The modern Greek word for “Thank you,” eucharisto, immediately calls to our Christian minds the gift of Christ’s body and blood, commemorated in our Eucharistic liturgy. The proper response to eucharisto today might not be as recognizable, but it is equally rich in theological meaning. The word parakalo, which functions as...
Thursday, May 7, 20200328Sheltering in place might not look much like a dark wood, but my time in quarantine has brought Dante to the forefront of my mind. I have long been awed by the brilliance of his “Divine Comedy,” the indescribably beautiful rhythm and rhyme of his Italian, and the sheer bravado that inspired him both to locate his own contemporaries...
Wednesday, April 22, 20200232Luke begins his account of Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah with a rather curious phrase: “Once when Jesus was praying in solitude, and the disciples were with him, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’” (Luke 9:18). Those who already know the answer might gloss over the sheer oddity of the opening...
Friday, April 10, 20200240Father Thomas Esposito
Special to The Texas Catholic
When I read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry, I often pause to ask myself: would I have been brave enough to accept his invitation to discipleship if I heard him with my own ears? Had I been a believing Jew following his ministry, could I have embraced his vision of my...
Friday, March 27, 20200254The word “quarantine” as we use it today was first coined in 14th century Venice – the leaders of that most serene watery republic ordered a mandatory period of isolation for people arriving in ships during the Black Death outbreak. A sequence of 40 days — una quarantina in modern Italian — was sufficient, they deemed, to...
