Twenty years since Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints got a Grammy nomination. One-hundred fifty since Grant and the Union occupied Nashville, Tennessee. Multiple millennia since Jonah preached in Nineveh… The people of Nineveh repented. (Luke 11:32) The people of Nineveh repented. What sins had they committed?
Archive for February, 2012
Loving Oneself in Nineveh
Posted in Holy Land, Homilies, tagged Civil War, Grant, Jonah, Lent, Nashville, Nineveh, Paul Simon, Penance, prophets, repentance, Rhythm of the Saints, sin on February 28, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Quick Sacred History Quiz
Posted in Homilies, tagged Abraham, David, exile, Isaac, Israel, Jacob, Lent, Moses, Old Testament, sacred history, Solomon, Temple on February 25, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Your ways, O Lord, make known to me. We sing this prayer in the Psalm at Mass. Why do we keep the season of Lent? The Spirit drove the Lord Jesus out into the desert. He fasted and prayed for forty days. The prophet Elijah walked through the desert for forty days to reach God’s [...]
Fast First from Sin
Posted in Homilies, tagged chocolate, coffee, Lent, Penance on February 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Maybe we could summarize our first reading at today’s Mass this way: Fast first from sin. Hunger does not please God in and of itself. Hunger for justice pleases God, and bodily hunger offered justly pleases Him. If we hunger for truth, then we will worry more about treating people right than we will about [...]
Tsetse* and Viv
Posted in Books, Magazines, Movies, Music, etc., tagged Anthony Blanche, Bertrand Russell, movie, Nicolas Grace, poetry, T. S. Eliot, Tom & Viv, Willem Dafoe on February 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »
He has his place in the DDYDB Hall of Fame for a reason. I lived the 24th year of my life in communion with T.S. Eliot, communion of the most intimate kind. The countless hours I spent in the Mullen Library at Catholic University, researching papers on “Four Quartets” and “Murder in the Cathedral,” rank [...]
Word Origins
Posted in Homilies, Prayer, tagged 40 days, Lent, quarantine on February 23, 2012 | 3 Comments »
Everywhere on earth, the Catholic Church keeps a forty-day season of penance to prepare for Easter. The Lord Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days, so we do, too. The question is: What do we call this season? In English, we call it Lent. This word refers to the lengthening of the daylight hours [...]
Noble Lent?
Posted in Homilies, Prayer, tagged almsgiving, Ash Wednesday, fasting, Lent, Prayer, Sermon on the Mount on February 21, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Is it more noble to act virtuously for its own sake–as opposed to doing it for a reward? Not sure. But God does not hesitate to promise a reward. Give secretly, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. Pray secretly, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. Fast secretly, [...]
Ghosts of Kennesaw + Why
Posted in Local Color, Politics, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Atlanta, battlefield, Civil War, Grant, Hood, Johnston, Kennesaw, Lord of the Rings, McPherson, Pickett's Mill, Sherman on February 17, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Another link between Atlanta and NYC: Two identical names get a lot of public use. Robert Fulton (steamboat inventor) and Johann DeKalb (Lafayette’s protégé, a German who fought in George Washington’s Continental Army). Both of these last names get barked out by countless municipal employees and traffic reporters in New York and Atlanta: Fulton and [...]
Dateline Atlanta
Posted in Local Color, tagged Atlanta, Chattahoochie, Civil War, post-modern architecture, Roswell, Sherman, Trail of Tears on February 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Yes, Atlanta has a Flatiron Building, too. And a Five Points. In fact, Atlanta’s Five Points lives–it’s the center of town–unlike New York’s long-gone Five Points. …The sun came up oh-so-sweetly over the Georgia hills this morning, and the following words of William Tecumseh Sherman haunted my mind: The scene was enchanting, too beautiful to [...]
Love’s Labor
Posted in Books, Magazines, Movies, Music, etc., Morals/Decision-Making, tagged Berowne, chastity, Council of Trent, HHS, Love's Labour's Lost, William Shakespeare on February 14, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Who loves “Love’s Labour’s Lost?” The young king and three of his courtiers vow to fast and study for three years, renouncing so much as the sight of a woman. But then the princess of a nearby country arrives as an ambassador, along with three ladies. Uh oh. One of the knights-votary plies his tongue [...]
Who’s the Mysterymonger?
Posted in Arguments for the faith, Homilies, tagged Big Bang, Dr. John Shook, Leviticus, mystery, Nicene Creed, priest, skepticism on February 11, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Our first reading and gospel reading both refer to ceremonies performed by priests. Thank God, none of us suffer from leprosy. But, nonetheless, we go to church to participate in a ceremony performed by a priest, to take part in the “sacred mysteries” of the Mass. Remember our friend the atheist debater, whom I mentioned [...]
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