SUNDAY:  “When oceans rise, my soul will rest in your embrace, for I am yours, and you are mine”

The rain continued throughout all last night, and so this morning, it became even more evident that flood levels are rising. For a while, our electricity went out, but somehow, thankfully, it came back on again before too long.

Realizing that we will probably be homebound until at least the weekend, two of the consecrated women in my community made the effort to see whether they could make it to a store for a few more groceries.

They weren’t even gone 10 minutes. There’s no way to get around or past the water. Continue reading →

FROM FRIDAY: “Preparation for the Storm”

When Harvey was still just a level 1 hurricane out at sea, headed towards the Texan coast yesterday, my community made the decision to head home to Houston from our vacation days to avoid getting stuck or stranded at the beach. When we got back, we found people everywhere getting ready for Harvey.

Julian and I ran to Wal-Mart for some last minute shopping, knowing that once it starts raining later today, we’re not going to be able to leave our home for days. It was only noon, and already the store was stripped of supplies. Continue reading →

I suppose the headline above gives a hint of my feelings on the topic for discussion in this little blog.  I’m in good company, because Bishop Robert Barron Tweeted this reaction:

That is perhaps the stupidest argument ever made in the public forum. That this lady is a professor of anything is an indictment of our entire educational establishment.

“That” was an appearance on “Philosophy Time” by Liz Harman, a professor at Princeton University.  If you aren’t a regular viewer of Philosophy Time (I wasn’t and likely won’t be), it is a short YouTube program hosted by actor James Franco and his friend, Eliot. Continue reading →

This summer Abraham and I became good friends.

My days at the oratorio estivo, or parish summer day camp, consisted in listening to announcements in the microphone, which I didn’t understand about what game we were going to play next, following the masses to one field or another, and then trying to stretch my vocabulary into some kind of interaction with the kids who were on the sidelines.

Language is pretty basic, but there were two other basic interactions that I wasn’t able to rely on either. To begin, it was very different for me that the minority of the day was focused on some sort of catechetical content, and that I couldn’t have been one to add it in Italian even if I had tried. Secondly, many times when I’m doing something that isn’t directly evangelizing; I experience more strongly just how far a simple testimony of someone belonging entirely to God can reach. But here, I didn’t even have that… the kids and counselors hadn’t the foggiest what a consecrated woman of Regnum Christi was, and much less that I was one–and anyway, being another one of those things that requires words, I couldn’t exactly sit down and explain it to them. I’m pretty sure that to most of them I was just the American (they had that part clear) who kind of dropped out of nowhere halfway through their camp. To top it off, I couldn’t even introduce the ECyD missionaries or help them to know what was going on; I was just as clueless as they were, so I contented myself with living the adventure with them. Continue reading →

“I get most of my news from Twitter.”

No, not me – someone I was listening to on a podcast…someone highly educated, articulate, respected.  Perhaps someone who isn’t the world’s deepest thinker or has an attention span of only 140 characters.

I don’t spend much time on Twitter, and the selection of people I follow is a bit narrow.  Someone I urgently recommend is the Pope.

Pope Francis has more than 35 million followers on his Twitter accounts in nine languages, according to Vatican Radio. Continue reading →

When I was little and the electricity would go out, I remember always being amazed at how many things I couldn’t do wothout it. I would go from one thing to the next looking for something to satiate my boredom, only to realize that movies, TV shows, computer games, snacks in the fridge, using the microwave and basically anything I wanted to do at that moment required electricity.

My first summer in a foreign language reminded me of having the electricity go out. My ideas would run up to the door of my brain one after another, trying to escape through my mouth, only to find that in order to leave they all required WORDS–Italian words. In knowing absolutely no conversational Italian upon my arrival, this summer was an extremely different experience than arriving to Spain two years ago, when I had understood more than half of what was going on and could slowly stumble through expressing basic ideas. This time, I got really good at the smile-and-nod-and-hope-they-aren’t-asking-you-a-question routine. Continue reading →

assumption

[uh-suhmp-shuh n]
noun
1. something taken for granted; a supposition:
a correct assumption.
Synonyms: presupposition; hypothesis, conjecture, guess, postulate, theory.
2. Ecclesiastical.
a. the bodily taking up into heaven of the Virgin Mary.
b. a feast commemorating this, celebrated on August 15.
(Dictionary.com 2017)

The Feast of the Assumption celebrates the dogma that the Church holds, stated in the Catechism as “The Most Blessed Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was completed, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven, where she already shares in the glory of her Son’s Resurrection, anticipating the resurrection of all members of His Body (974).”

Mary is always the woman who goes before us, the Mother who beckons us as she would beckon a toddler taking their first steps, to rise and walk towards her arms. She does this from Heaven, body and soul, smiling at us, holding out her arms and showing us that her joy is for us to follow in her footsteps, arriving in Heaven with her as well. Msgr. Charles Pope wrote in his blog, Communion in Mission, Continue reading →

I just woke up from a six week long dream. Not a one of those dreams where you are asleep – one where it is more real than you could have imagined.

Growing up in an Italian-American family, I’ve envisioned Italy and the Italian culture with a gilded tint for as long as I can remember. Actually going there was on another level altogether. So when this summer I was assigned to an apostolate that would bring me to Italy for the first time, I definitely felt like I was dreaming- even more so because there were only a few short exam-filed weeks between when I found out I would be going there and my arrival. It felt surreal all the way up until I arrived to the airport in Milan and heard people actually speaking in Italian. Continue reading →

Living in the “Fifth Gospel”, the Holy Land, tantalizes the imagination.  Recently it brought about a line of thought I never imagined my mind would take.  I asked the question: When we think of the exalted vocation of motherhood, we immediately think of Mary, the Mother of Jesus as model.  But could we look to Mary of Magdala as a woman with an expansive maternal heart?   What ultimately constitutes “motherhood”, beyond the evident physical bearing of children?  John Paul II summed it up for me:

The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way… Our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that “genius” which belongs to every woman, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance (Mulieris Dignitatem 30).

Mary, the Mother of God is a model of sensitivity for all persons in all circumstances.  Her sensitivity to the human details at the wedding of Cana becomes a catalyst for launching Jesus’ public ministry where we see the fecundity of a Mother’s request: a transformation of water to wine.  Her bleeding and suffering heart accompanies her Son to the foot of the cross, bearing fruit in her vocation as universal Mother of the Church.  The body of Jesus taken down from the cross and received by his Mother summons up the image of the Mystical Body of Christ embraced by the New Eve. Continue reading →

Genetic modification is nothing new.  Some might call it miraculous.

The practice started a few thousand years before the birth of Christ.  If a farmer grew corn, he would plant seeds from the hardiest plants that produce the most.  If a herder wanted to improve his flock, he would breed the strongest ram with the fattest ewe to produce better lambs.

Of course, things got more sophisticated in the past several decades.  The first genetically modified plants appeared in the 1980s.  We got better corn, cheese, potatoes and cotton.  In the past couple years, we got modified animals approved for consumption, notably faster-growing salmon. Continue reading →