“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”[1]
In the Jewish tradition the Levi...
St. Augustine famously said that he who sings prays twice. Commonly seen on choir t-shirts and tour booklets, a reapplication of Augustine’s phrase taken out of context elevates the skill of those able to sing as being more accomplished at prayer. Yet, this isn’t quite true. Reading the whole text which this blurb is taken from leads to a deeper understanding. Augustine writes, “For he who sings p...
“I want so much to be yours, and there is only one thing constantly in my way--that I am myself.”
As a Cradle Catholic it is safe to say that I am more than familiar with going to Mass on Sundays: it has been a part of my weekly routine since day 6 (I was born on a Tuesday. Nobody’s perfect). My understanding of and attentiveness to what happens during the Mass has changed over the years as I’ve grown up and taken more interest in my own faith. There were some parts that just didn’t make any s...
The first time I attended Mass while studying abroad in Italy six years ago, I was nearly trampled in the sudden surge forward at Holy Communion. The nice, familiar, genteel, orderly lines cultivated through years of practice back home in the States? Totally abandoned. At first, I thought it was just an Italian thing, like the frenetic and bewildering rush for one’s daily cappuccino e cornetto in ...
A few months ago, I was stuck in the deep trenches of service options on the Catholic Volunteer Network website. Simultaneously, I was overwhelmed when thinking about the enormity of social, political, and economic issues affecting real people’s lives inside and outside the U.S. Would I be choosing one community over another? What are the implications of that? Who is my brother, sister, mother? Ho...
While serving a weekday Mass recently, the only way to remain focused while holding the Roman Missal (a large book that necessitates a strange twisting of myself to hold it upright) was to follow along on the page as the priest read the Eucharistic Prayer. This proved beneficial since I was struck anew by a phrase I have heard virtually every week since birth (although in a new translation since 2...
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...
