In politics and other news, the world seems beleaguered and bleary. It’s a great time to talk about heaven!
A sensational account of heaven
Month: October 2016
The truth about elephants
We’ve all heard the story about the blind men who investigate an elephant. But the story doesn’t mean what people think it does….
The color of reading
Emotion colors perception wonderfully. The same aspen tree, with the same white bark and the same golden leaves fluttering in the same wind, is one tree to the moonstruck lover, another tree to the poet in search of joy, and still a third to the dismal soul doubting whether life has meaning. The same sensory input offers either a happy companion, or a wistful finger pointing to another realm, or a bleached-out bit of wood. Continue reading “The color of reading”
How the Mass is a Sacrifice
This semester, students at WCC set their theology teachers a theme: the liturgy. Teachers chose topics within the theme, and students arranged the topics into a semester-long series. Just like that, the students gained for themselves a full “practicum” on the liturgy, while each teacher has only to give two or three talks. It’s a great arrangement!
Recently, I was tapped for a talk on “the theology of the Mass” or “how the Mass is a sacrifice.” You can download it here, or listen online:
Students loved the talk, but they seemed especially excited about the explanation of transubstantiation in the Q&A.
By the way, I’m wondering whether I should post more of these recordings or even start a podcast. Your feedback would be helpful.
Sacred Heart Enthronement Hymn
When I first met the woman who would become my wife, her family had been saying a prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus every night for as long as she could remember. It was a variant on the Renewal of the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart. Now Jacinta and I have said that same prayer every night with our kids for years and years.
A few weeks ago, we began Project Bard: we determined to build a treasury of songs by singing more or less every night–rounds, hymns, camp-fire songs, whatever. To approach the ocean by little streams, we began with some of the goofier selections from Cedarmont Kids’ 100 Singalong Songs for Kids.
We always end our singing session with night prayers, so one day it hit me: why not sing night prayers? It wasn’t hard to adapt our Sacred Heart prayer to a traditional hymn tune from the Roman Breviary, drawing on Fr. Samuel Weber’s Hymnal for the Hours. The result was just a little thing for my family, not really memorable poetry, but given Austin Kleon’s principle about sharing your work, and given that today is the memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, I think I’ll toss it up here: Continue reading “Sacred Heart Enthronement Hymn”