Cardinal Burke stresses Catholic media's 'supreme importance'

Cardinal Burke stresses Catholic media's 'supreme importance'

Lent Day 24 - Christ at the Center

The massive rose windows of the medieval Gothic cathedrals were not only marvels of engineering and artistry; they were also symbols of the well-ordered soul. The pilgrim coming to the cathedral for spiritual enlightenment would be encouraged to meditate upon the rose of light and color in order to be drawn into mystical conformity with it. 

What would he or she see? At the center of every rose window is a depiction of Christ (even when Mary seems to be the focus, she is carrying the Christ child on her lap), and then wheeling around him in lyrical and harmonious patterns are the hundreds of medallions, each depicting a saint or a scene from scripture. 

The message of the window is clear: When one's life is centered on Christ, all the energies, aspirations, and powers of the soul fall into a beautiful and satisfying pattern. And by implication, whenever something other than Christ--money, sex, success, adulation--fills the center, the soul falls into disharmony. 

Jesus expressed this same idea when he said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the rest will be given unto you" (Mt 6:33). When the divine is consciously acknowledged as the ground and organizing center of one's existence, something like wholeness or holiness is the result. 

Don't live your life on the rim of the circle, but rather at the center. Focus on that reliable, unchanging point where Christ resides.

"When one's life is centered on Christ, all the energies, aspirations, and powers of the soul fall into a beautiful and satisfying pattern."

- Father Robert Barron

Lent Day 23 - The One Who Fully Heals

What exactly is sin? To answer that we should first make a simple observation: we are all, at a fundamental level, unsatisfied. And more to the point, we know it: "People are much sadder than they seem," concluded St. John Vianney. 

Our minds are hungry for truth and want it in great waves. But they get it, if at all, only in small doses and tiny drops. Likewise, our hearts hunger for goodness, and they get it, if at all, in dribs and drabs. We seem to know what to do, and what to be, but we seem fundamentally incapable of realizing it. 

There just seems to be something "broken" in all of us, something not as it should be. Even worse, we know in our more honest moments that there is nothing we can do about it. Our minds are flawed, and we can't think them back into health; our wills are weak and we can't will them back into strength. 

I realize how difficult this is for us to accept. Optimism and a can-do attitude belongs to the mythology of America, a country born of Enlightenment rationalism and confidence. But whenever we as individuals or nations try to lift ourselves up out of this problem, we make matters worse. Whenever we listen to a guru, a demagogue, a dictator, or a self-help psychologist, who tell us that all will be well either through economic, political, cultural, or interior reform, we make matters worse. 

This is our misery, but it is also, in an odd way, our greatness. We are broken, but since we are made in the image and likeness of God, he can fix us. One of the most important spiritual tasks then, especially in our time, is to awaken to the fact of sin--and to acknowledge our need for a savior. 

"Those who are healthy do not need a physician," Jesus claimed, "but the sick do." Only when we recognize our deep brokenness and dissatisfaction, neither of which we can heal on our own, can we encounter the One who fully heals.  

"One of the most important spiritual tasks then, especially in our time, is to awaken to the fact of sin--and to acknowledge our need for a savior."

- Adapted from Father Robert Barron  

Delta with all new seating section

(Fox; AP photo) Delta Airlines has teamed up with LinkedIn to launch a program which matches up leaders in various fields on their way to major industry events and up-and-coming professionals whose applications meet a special set of criteria.  Both get a free first class seat and are encouraged to exchange ideas and gain valuable knowledge along the way.  Delta has named this new seating section "innovation class".

Click here to read more.

Average April Temperatures at Tekton Ministries Pilgrimage Site (F)

Lent Day 22 - What We Carry When We Die

In 1932, just as the Great Depression was getting underway, an itinerant philosopher named Peter Maurin found himself in New York City. There he met a young woman, a spiritual seeker and social activist who had just converted to Catholicism. Her name was Dorothy Day. 

Together Maurin and Day founded the Catholic Worker Movement, at the heart of which lay a newspaper and several houses of hospitality, places where poor and hungry people could receive a meal or a place to sleep. Their goal was to create a society where it was "easier to be good," changing modern America from being "a society of go-getters to a society of go-givers." 

How did they go about making this change? By following the practical precepts of the church, which flow directly from Matthew 25, namely, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, bury the dead, counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, pray for the living and the dead. When these are practiced, they realized, one's concern for "peace and justice" is no longer an abstraction or a harmless wish with no effect. It becomes real and impactful. 

Upon our death we can take no earthly treasures with us. We leave behind our wealth, our power, our social status, our degrees, and our titles. Yet paradoxically, in Maurin's own words, "what we give to the poor for Christ's sake is what we carry with us when we die." 

"What we give to the poor for Christ's sake is what we carry with us when we die."- Peter Maurin  

Adapted from Fr. Robert Barron

Lent Day 21 - Why Fast During Lent?

Across almost all cultures and religions, fasting has been an ancient spiritual practice. Its main rationale is that by detaching ourselves from certain desires, we awaken deeper hungers. 

It's hard for us to experience that. Most of the time, we're dominated by our sensual desires--our desires for food, drink, sex, and pleasure. Yet it's by fasting from these admittedly good things that we allow deeper hungers to emerge. That includes, perhaps most of all, the desire for God, the desire for intimacy and communion with him. 

Today, choose one shallow desire to detach yourself from--not by suppressing it, but by distancing yourself from it. In doing so you'll awaken your deeper hunger for God.  

"By detaching ourselves from certain desires, we awaken deeper hungers."

- Father Robert Barron  

Upcoming day of reconciliation announced by Pope

Upcoming day of reconciliation announced by Pope :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Lent Day 20 - Up to the Mountain

In the account of the Transfiguration, we hear that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him "up the mountain to pray." Mountains are standard Biblical places of encounter with God. The higher you go, the closer you come to Yahweh, who resided in the sky. 

We don't have to literalize this but should unpack its symbolic sense. In order to commune with God, you have to step out of your everyday, workaday world. The mountain symbolizes transcendence, otherness, the realm of God. 

This means that when people say, "I pray on the go" or "my work is my prayer," they're not really speaking as people of prayer. You need to go higher or beyond your normal world. 

Your mountain might be church, a special room in your house, the car, a corner of the natural world. But it has to be someplace where you have stepped out of your ordinary business. 

Today, choose to go "up to the mountain to pray" in order to meet God in the higher place.  

"In order to commune with God, you have to step outside of your everyday, workaday world."

- Father Robert Barron  

Lent Day 19 - Rolling Away the Stone of Death

In all of the Gospel accounts, mention is made of the huge stone rolled across the entrance of Jesus' tomb after his burial. This seems to stand for the awful finality of death, the irreversible, dense facility of it. 

But in Jesus' victorious resurrection, that stone is effortlessly rolled away. 

This subtle but important action highlights why each Sunday is our victory day. The power that held us ransom has been overthrown; the dark cloud that has brooded over our lives, turning us in on ourselves and outward in violence and sin, has been removed. 

Now we can sing, "Death and sorrow, earth's dark story, to the former days belong." And, "Where the Paschal blood is poured, Death's dark angel sheaths his sword." 

With Paul, we can mock the former lord of the world: "Death where is thy sting?" And with the psalmist we can say-now at full pitch-"If God is for us, who can be against us?" 

Jesus rolls away the stone of death and brings to that dark place the light of God. 

- Father Robert Barron