Healing takes many different forms because it is a response to many different kinds of threats. A cut and a broken leg are each healed differently because the damage is different; nevertheless, the same end is sought in both cases. The root of the word “heal” in old English (haelan) means to cure, to save, to make whole, sound, and well. That must further explain why we can apply the word metaphor...
To be healed does not mean to be cured. Cure restores a former state of being, an expected state, a comfortable state. Medical treatment and prayers for miracles of cure are powerful and sometimes effective. Healing, however, encompasses a much greater and deeper change in someone’s life. Cure may be part of this, but is not a necessary part. Healing opens up a new life, a new way of understanding...
It may seem absurd to entertain even for a moment the idea that monks, friars, and brothers might be models of healthy masculinity. First of all because our vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience might rule us out us as plausible male figures. Poverty and obedience suggest that we are irresponsible people, fleeing the ordinary burdens of manhood, such as having a job, acquiring a home, taking de...
"Being Catholic means living a life. The practice precedes the theology."
Saints are lights; lights flash and flare, sometimes in their own time, and sometimes later as what was hidden comes to the light. The acceptance of this light is no more automatic than the acceptance of the most effulgent light of all, the Light of light who came into the world and shone in the darkness. When John says in the fourth Gospel that “the world knew him not” (Jn 1:10), he doesn’t mean ...
We like to pretend as if we have total control. “Measureless acquisition, consumption, or economic growth in a finite environment is a literally nonsensical idea; yet the imperative of growth remains unassailable, as though we did not really inhabit a material world,” writes Rowan Williams in “Embracing Our Limits,” an analysis of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’. “The plain thereness of the p...
