The three temptations of Jesus are familiar to all of us – the temptation for sensual satisfaction, the thirst for power, and the desire for worldly recognition – but, as the Spanish exorcist Father Jose Antonio Fortea explains, these temptations become much more subtle and dangerous when they are imposed on the devout.
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by Kathleen Beckman
Lent’s forty days of prayer and fasting offer a process of healing and liberation. In Lent we place ourselves nearer to the suffering servant, Jesus Christ. We ponder the Redeemer’s suffering. We remember that Christ’s Passion sanctified all human suffering. We relate to His pain because we are touched by the corporate weight of sin and evil in the world. It rubs against us in ordinary life. The Christian is called to push back the tsunami of sin and evil.
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The canonized women who are mothers add to our altars a special kind of incense – a two-fold fragrance of motherhood, both natural and spiritual. The very definition of their sainthood reveals that the life of the soul was sacrosanct to them and that while they nurtured the physical life of their children, it was eternal life which they desired to impart above all.
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Even though all of us were created by God to do Him some definite service in this world, the reason why some of us find it so difficult to discern what that service is supposed to be is because we have a tendency to over-complicate the discernment process. Maybe this Lenten season is the time to get rid of that bad habit.
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The priest abuse scandal is a disgrace, as was the Pachamama debacle at the Amazonian Synod and the dissident priests who are running amok, promoting everything from same-sex marriage to goofy New Age gimmicks like the Enneagram; but every time I start to attack the Church for its pitiful condition I feel a check in my spirit and instantly think of a meme someone posted on Facebook a few months ago - “Why would I give up Jesus because of what Judas did?” Why am I blaming the Church for what a few bad actors are doing?
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Even the SparrowWhen I was invited to attend the FOCUS conference, SLS20: “Made for Mission” in Phoenix Dec 30-Jan 3, I jumped at the chance. The prior year’s event, SEEK2019, had been attended by some friends who declared it life-changing. And to have it in my backyard? Count me in!
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Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Polls have found that seven out of 10 young voters support restrictions on abortion, results that are giving pro-life women the perfect opportunity to use their feminine genius to open the eyes of young women to the truth about U.S. abortion law that is too often hidden behind “reproductive rights” misinformation.
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Spoiler alert! The moral of this blog is not to advise you to ask God for help before making your resolutions. That’s a no-brainer. The point is to show you, from first-hand experience, just how much better God can "do" our resolutions than we can.
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The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. — Eleanor Roosevelt
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The connection between Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the first recorded Nativity re-enactment has been well documented by sources close to him. The year was 1223, and Francis enlisted the help of a friend to stage a reverent live rendering of the scene which had taken place in the stable at Bethlehem. The setting was Greccio, a small Italian town located about 55 miles north of Rome.
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