The Spiritual Benefits of Fasting Year-Round

Posted by Anna Bradley on Apr 8, 2021 7:24:00 AM

I started daily 16-hour fasts in July of 2019 after researching the benefits of intermittent fasting. When I was presented with a concrete plan for turning fasting into a more intentional spiritual practice, I discovered something much more rewarding than physical discipline.

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Topics: Easter, fasting, Feasts, Pope Francis, coronavirus, COVID-19 Resources, intermittent fasting

Liturgy and Education, Part 11: Liturgical Culture as a Healing Medicine

Posted by Timothy O'Malley on Jan 26, 2021 7:04:00 AM

In the previous post, I looked at three aspects of Pope Francis’ pontificate that address areas where liturgy might be healing of culture. Liturgical prayer provides an alternative to the technocratic paradigm, tribalism, and a culture of forgetfulness. In other words, a liturgical culture of life upholds the importance of matter, community, and an embodied approach to memory.

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Topics: Catholic education, Pope Francis, liturgy and education

Liturgy and Education, Part 10: Developing a Liturgical Culture

Posted by Timothy O'Malley on Jan 21, 2021 7:04:00 AM

A Diagnosis

One of the problems with liturgy is that it is often treated exclusively as an intramural activity of the Church. That is, liturgical education is about making sure that we ‘say the black’ (the words) and ‘do the red’ (the rubrics). Studying the liturgy, then, is basically learning to read the cookbook. Lay folk have their parts in this cookbook, and therefore, the Catholic school, family, and parish must teach these parts.

This means that liturgy becomes entirely a “churchy” thing, unrelated to the rest of life. However, this is a poor understanding of the liturgy. Liturgy has to do with culture—the way that we live our lives in the world. Liturgical culture means that liturgy “informs” what it means to be human in the context of the school, the family, and the parish.

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Topics: Catholic education, Pope Francis, liturgy and education

Rediscover Wonder through the Nativity Scene

Posted by Kelly Deehan on Dec 21, 2020 7:04:00 AM

Take a moment to visualize the Nativity scene that was in your home as a child. Try to see it through your childhood eyes once again. What do you see? Do you remember that sense of wonder as you look at that familiar figurine of baby Jesus in the manger?

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Topics: devotional prayer, Dorothy Day, Echo, Pope Francis, Advent, crèche, Nativity scene, Christian art

Spiritual Friendship and the Redemptive Vision of "Fratelli Tutti"

Posted by Gregory Floyd on Oct 20, 2020 7:02:00 AM

One of the oldest reflections on friendship is Plato’s Lysis in which Socrates suggests that a friend “somehow belong[s] to his beloved either in his soul or in some characteristic, habit, or aspect of his soul.”[1] Developing this intuition, Aristotle, later argued that in a perfect friendship, friends must “live together,”[2] by sharing deeply in one another’s inner life, famously describing such a friend as “another self.”[3] True friends are those whose hearts and minds pursue the same thing—goodness for Plato and virtue for Aristotle.

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Topics: Pope Francis, friendship, Fratelli Tutti

Living and Handing on the Faith

The McGrath Institute Blog helps Catholics live and hand on their faith in Jesus Christ, especially in the family, home and parish, and cultivates and inspires everyday leaders to live out the fullness and richness of their faith in the simple, little ways that make up Church life.

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