Every Wednesday another seminarian and I work at a shelter run by Mother Teresa’s sisters, the Missionaries of Charity. The shelter is in the poorest ZIP code in the United States. The men there have messy and complicated lives — many are estranged from families, suffer addictions or check knives at the door — but somehow these lives seem to work out. These guys have almost nothing but they find w...
If you have spent any time in a parish—or in the Midwest for that matter—you have likely been to a potluck. You know, a meal where various dishes are brought to be shared and enjoyed by all. Sometimes when a group really knows how to throw a good potluck, you may have even been assigned a dish “category” corresponding with the first letter of your last name. Now, those people really know how to th...
I used to think that the Prayer of the Faithful was a bit like a bill passed in Congress. There would be certain key prayers, followed by additional prayers from special interest groups that might not have been part of the original plan, but after a vote from the parish committee on Sunday all of us are obliged to stand and repeat, “Lord, hear our prayer,” regardless of whether we were particularl...
When First Year Students enter the university each fall, they are provided the opportunity for a prompt and thorough indoctrination into the Notre Dame football culture. They learn the gestures, the cheers, and the songs that will punctuate their existence during their time on campus, and that will continue to help define their identities as alumni and alumnae long into the future. These tradition...
The cantor raises their arms, calling the congregation to stand and proclaim, Alleluia. Slowly, I shake myself out of my sleepy stupor and rise with my fellow Mass-goers. At this point, I am thankful for an excuse to stand. I haven’t had much to do for a while, and I’m in danger of falling asleep. Even though they call it the Liturgy of the Word, they don’t really give us many words to say, do the...
Wedged between the First Reading and Second Reading at Sunday Mass (or between the First Reading and Gospel at daily Mass) is a small reading known as the Responsorial Psalm. If you attend Mass today, for example, you will hear:
In March of this year the University of Notre Dame was honored to host Archbishop Gintaras Grusas of Vilnius, Lithuania and to screen the new documentary film “The Original Image of Divine Mercy”.[1] Within Vilnius itself is the actual original image of Divine Mercy that was painted in 1933 by artist Eugene Kazimierowski under the direction of St. Faustina who received inner locutions and appariti...
Silence is not a common feature in my life. As a musician I am rarely without a song in my head, and this song can find its way out of my mind even with the slightest prompting—if a word, phrase, or chord progression resembles something in a song I love, I begin a full rendition. I’ve been known to accidentally hum in class absentmindedly, much to the dismay of my teachers. Heck, I even talk in my...
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
