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Florida bishop and Catholic school win Super Bowl food wager
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady celebrates with Vince Lombardi Trophy after winning Super Bowl LV on Feb. 7, 2021; photo: CNS/Mark J. Rebilas, USA TODAY Sports via Reuters.Catholics in St. Petersburg, Florida, will need to get their napkins ready because some barbecue from Kansas City, Missouri, is coming their way.
A friendly wager between the bishops and two Catholic schools from the dioceses of the competing cities in Super Bowl LV put food on the line for the victory days before the Feb.7, 2021 game, which ended with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beating the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9.
A bet is a bet!
Bishop Gregory L. Parkes of St. Petersburg and Bishop James V. Johnston Jr., of Kansas City-St. Joseph came up with their Super Bowl wager on the Feb. 2 episode of "Conversation with Cardinal Dolan" on Sirius XM's The Catholic Channel, where they were talking about the upcoming matchup with teams from their dioceses.
Read more Florida bishop and Catholic school win Super Bowl food wager
It’s back to Lent again
How is your Lent going?
These first few weeks have been really busy for me. I can imagine that in your life, too, you feel the “pull” of many responsibilities and demands on your time. We need to encourage each other to keep moving forward in the spirit of Lent.
Keep on trucking along…
We start off Lent with good intentions. I have a friend who always makes the same resolution: “This Lent, I’m going to make real progress in my spiritual life. I’m really going to do Lent ‘right.’”
It is a beautiful aspiration. But sometimes things get in the way or we lose focus. The point is not to give up or start being critical and “beating up” on ourselves. We need to just return to the path. After all, Lent is about conversion, new beginnings. Jesus is always there to offer his hand so that we can return to God.
Hank Aaron overcame racism to excel in life
Hank Aaron, who was baseball's home run king for 33 years, overcame racism to make his mark in the game he loved. Aaron died Jan. 22, 2021 at age 86.
Aaron, who became a Catholic while playing for the Milwaukee Braves…
He never hit 50 home runs in a season, much less 60 or even 70 as other sluggers did; in his best season, he knocked 47 homers out of the park in 1971, when he was 37 years old. But it was his consistency that allowed him to amass 755 round-trippers over 23 seasons playing for the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, and -- after he had set the record -- back to Milwaukee to play for the Brewers.
Religious vows offer wisdom in this epic uncertainty
How does one choose to commit for life in the midst of epic uncertainty?
In early March, I was in the thick of preparing to request final vows. After three years as a temporary professed sister, I had no real hesitations about going all in. The prior months of discernment had not surfaced any second thoughts, regrets or misgivings. My life and my identity as a sister increasingly felt like a right fit.
The choice seemed straightforward and I remember wondering if I shouldn't be digging deeper somehow. Shouldn't discerning something this important be more intense, more complicated, more deliberative? That's when the coronavirus pandemic swept in, adding countless layers of intensity and complexity to everything.
COVID-19 has reframed every aspect of our lives, our relationships and our world, lending new clarity to things we scarcely noticed before. The pandemic is a common experience with a deeply personal twist. One of the paradoxes of this shared global crisis is that we are all going through the same thing, but experiencing it very differently. An unexpected gift of time with family is also the source of deepest distress for parents struggling to make ends meet. One person's inconvenience is another person's death sentence.
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Earth to Elon
Elon Musk made only a minor blip on the news cycle radar screen recently when he declared his planned settlement on Mars will not adhere to international law, but I think it deserved more attention.
The secret of Walter Ciszek’s ‘Little Way’
I recently told a friend that one Catholic in my lifetime I really wish I could have met was Father Walter Ciszek, S.J. (1904-1984). He was a remarkable American priest. His dream was to evangelize Russia, and in 1939 he crossed from Poland into the Soviet Union amid the chaos of World War II.
Quickly caught by the KGB, for 23 years he was in prisons and slave labor camps and finally internal exile before returning to New York in 1963.
“With God in Russia”
Father Ciszek wrote two books. “With God in Russia” is an account of the events of his life in the Soviet Union. But the real treasure is “He Leadeth Me,” a powerful spiritual memoir of those events.
Marian tapestry completes L.A. Cathedral’s 'Communion of Saints'
As the shrouds were removed from the five panels of a stunning new tapestry honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary in the apse of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels before morning Mass on New Year’s Day, it seemed fitting that their removal required the sound of ripping Velcro.
A necessarily harsh sound to mark a clean break from a harsh year, one that, as Archbishop José H. Gomez acknowledged that morning, may have felt like a bad nightmare for many.
Read more Marian tapestry completes L.A. Cathedral’s 'Communion of Saints'
The Son-like Face of God…
“If my people refuse to submit, I will be forced to let go the arm of my Son.”
Selected portion of The Sermon on the Mount by Carl Bloch (1834-1890)The starting point of everything is that first “yes” that Mary gives to the bearer of the divine message, the Angel Gabriel. Since then, Mary has made herself available to God as clay in the potter’s hand. But rather than clay, Mary consciously participates in this mission in her condition of the one “full of grace.”
For Mary, God, the very Self-One, sets out on the path of encounter with humanity, contrary to the figure of the repentant younger son of the gospel who returns embarrassed to his father’s house. To go to this encounter of humanity, that means to come to the meeting with us is precisely the identifying character of the act of God, through the help of his mediators. The prophets zealously have been fulfilling the mission of making God present within the human community.
At this point, Our Lady, in her apparitions, does nothing else but share the greatness of the divine heart which, at all costs, calls humanity to discover that feeling of God who is happy to have humans with him.
The Mountain of God
La Salette reflects, in splendor, the face of God. Not so much with regard to the Holy Mountain, although many of the great events of salvation, carried by our Lord Jesus Christ, have much to do with the mountains. The message of La Salette raises in us the decision to return to this friendship with God often broken because of the mentality of the today’s human beings who boast themselves as Christians and in fact are deprived of Christ and his gospel.
At La Salette Mary is the spokesperson for a wonderful Gospel-focused message; that is, the Beautiful Lady does not proclaim herself, before taking as her own the words that her lips transmit. Just look at this part of the message:
Washington pastors reflect on Capitol attack that hit close to home
Like many across the country, Father William Gurnee and Father Gary Studniewski watched in horror as a rioting mob stormed and ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, attempting to disrupt Congress at it certified the Electoral College vote of President-elect Joe Biden.
But for those two priests, the attack hit particularly close to home, because they serve as pastors of Capitol Hill parishes in Washington. Father Gurnee leads St. Joseph's Parish on the Northeast side of Capitol Hill and Father Studniewski leads St. Peter's Parish on the Southeast side.
Read more Washington pastors reflect on Capitol attack that hit close to home
Christ’s love is certain
The Rim Fire burned more than 250,000 acres of forest near Yosemite National Park in 2013As I write, wildfires are devastating the mountain and foothill regions outside of Los Angeles, as fires are burning elsewhere in California and other states in the west.
I’ve been praying for the families that have been displaced, for those who have been killed and injured, and those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, as well as for emergency workers and everyone in harm’s way...
And still we are dealing with the fallout from the coronavirus. In some parts of the world, we are seeing the first signs of famine emerging. Here at home we are dealing with the effects of the economic and social lockdown that has kept businesses, schools, and churches closed for six months now.
During this pandemic year our faith is being tested
This has been a troubling year, for all of us, so many people suffering from the pandemic, the fires, the uncertainty in our economy, in public life. Our faith is being tested. And we are asking ourselves: Where do we place our trust? What do we value, what is important in our lives?