Monday, November 27, 20170178Christ commands us to love with “all” our heart, soul and mind (Mt 22:34-40). But what does that look like? To speak about “all” a heart is to speak about a “pure” heart: a simple, whole and straightforward heart, free from anything extraneous. When we love purely, we are unified by a single love.
Friday, November 3, 20170116St. 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, 2017085A story. Some time ago I had lunch with a black friend in a major city. I asked him what it was like when he first met the couple that informally adopted him by mentoring him after he aged out of foster care. He said something like, “During the first six months I was suspicious, because I had been burned many times before, but then I...
Thursday, October 5, 20170126
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, 20170187
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...
Wednesday, May 10, 20170231I am convinced Catholics have an important gift to give to the world through the “social teaching” developing in the Church since Rerum Novarum in 1891. But even though all the popes between Leo XIII and Francis have put the economic, political and social impact of the Gospel at the forefront of their agendas, the world is still...
Thursday, April 27, 20170181The 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...
Thursday, April 20, 2017041Lent is over. Now it is time to celebrate Holy Week and Easter. For forty days, we tried to understand the rough words spoken to us as a priest marked our foreheads with ashes: “Remember, mortal, that you are dust and to dust you will return” (Gn 3:19). Now we try to understand that marvelous event which took place two-thousand years...
Friday, March 31, 20170143
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...
Wednesday, March 29, 20170118What is the difference between evangelization and proselytism? As Christians, we have been commanded to go out and “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). And yet, we are sensitive to the conflicts that emerge from proselytism, or from attitudes that are — rightly or wrongly — sometimes associated with Christian missionaries:...
