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Inspired by the Holy Spirit, our Dominican mission and the call of Pope Benedict XVI to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ through new media, preachingfriars.org focuses on spreading the Gospel through videos, preaching, and theological discourse.
During my time as a religious living in community––specifically as a Dominican, recognizing all our Dominican-ish quirks––in conversations, I have noticed pet peeves developing in me as regards personal interaction. I want to share this with the world because I think that a disclosure of this kind will serve to elucidate on a much broader scale how we tend to short circuit what could be genuine personal interaction that could lead to meaningful relationships. See if perhaps these kinds of conversations happen in your life. If they do, I'd be interested to know how you feel/think about them. If it doesn't help... well, excuse my overly self-referent style.
The one I wish to share is: correcting and...
Though there is no new webcast this week, a running theme thus far in our show has been the records set by Jamie Moyer. Well, add another record to that list as the 49-year-old southpaw set the record for the oldest player in MLB history to record an RBI.
Moyer, again he is 49, accomplished the feat by legging out an infield single that plated two runs for the Rockies during its 6-1 victory over the Diamondbacks last night in Denver. (You can watch the video here.)
On top of his offensive prowess, Moyer pitched six-and-a-third innings of one run ball without throwing a ball harder than 80 mph, which means that Barry Zito, another soft-tossing lefty...
In the Gospel Reading, Christ suggests a remedy for any problem we have. The Father will give you anything you ask for, he says, if you will just ask for it in Christ’s name.
But what is it to ask for something in Christ’s name? It can’t be a matter of simply tacking the name of Christ on to any prayer. “I would like a Porsche, please, in the name of Christ.” Prayer isn’t magic. It isn’t a matter of using the right magical formulas in order to make God do what you want him to do.
It helps here to consider the homely cases in which one person asks something in the name of another. A secretary can ask for the mail in her boss’s name: “I’m just here to pick up the mail for my boss!” A child can ask a neighbor for a cup of sugar in his mother’s name: “Mrs. Murphy, my mother wants to know if you could lend her a cup of sugar.”
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As we move into the summer, I will continue to be posting reviews of movies periodically. However, before summer comes it might be helpful to share some of my most awaited upcoming movies. And don't kid yourself – this is going to be a rather exciting summer movie season with a number of extraordinary films on the way:
1. Prometheus
My number one most-expected movie for this upcoming summer 2012, directed by J Ridley Scott, and – thankfully – an original movie rather than a reboot of an older series or a remake of a comic book. It will be a sci-fi tale set within the Alien universe, where futuristic explorers looking for the origin of mankind among the stars find something horrific and unexpected. More along the...
Baseball, like God, is full of wonderful surprises.
16 and 19. Those are the number of four home run games and perfect games ever in Major League Baseball.
Before Tuesday night, a perfect game and four home run game had never occurred in the same season.
On this week's webcast, we discuss Albert Pujols' poor start, a class on the divine and baseball at NYU, Josh Hamilton's four home run game, Jamie Moyer's newest record, Edwin Encarnacion's torrid start, and the first pitching win by a position player in the AL in over 40 years.
Where did subsidiarity come from? The Church started talking about subsidiarity in the 19th century. ‘Old?’ Sure, if you're an American. The 1940’s are ‘old’ for us. But the 1840’s? That’s very recent for the Church. So why then? What happened in the 1800’s? The Industrial Revolution.
I thought the 1800’s were boring. My textbook had a bunch of paintings of grimy, dirty cities and fiery factories. Bo-ring! Well… I’ve matured. A little.
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The first command God gave to human beings was “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). In the Gospel Reading, there is a kind of reiteration of this command. At any rate, the text describes the bad things that happen to people who are not fruitful.
In Genesis, the fruitfulness has to do with reproduction. It comes from union between a man and a woman, and it multiplies God’s image in the production of children.
The fruitfulness at issue in the Gospel comes from connection too, but connection with Christ. It comes when Christ is in you, and you are in him.
This reciprocal being-in is a funny state of affairs, isn’t it? You can put a bowl in a box, or you can put a box in a bowl. But the box can’t be in the bowl when the bowl in in the box!
Boxes and bowls can’t manage reciprocal being-in. But persons can, because of love. ...
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the canonization of St. Martin DePorres, Dominican friar of Lima, Peru and patron of the Dominican Province of St. Martin DePorres, Southern USA.
Blessed John XXIII spoke two years prior to the canonization of Martin DePorres saying,
“I have thought of your lands, your immense and beautiful continent, lands where saints have flourished...humble, pure and innocent...Such was Martin DePorres, long recognized as blessed, but upon whose forehead we already see shining the radiant halo of the saints... It is necessary to always speak and practice the truth, to observe the virtue of justice for all people, doing harm to no one, and, above all, to establish a world...
“Jesus…the son of Joseph,…the son of David,…the son of Abraham,…the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Cf. Lk 3:23-38)
Who-we-are is very much bound up with where-we-come-from and this provenance is not so much what national boundaries we were born within, but more precisely that long lineage of values, cultures, and genetics of the people to whom we were born. We are irrevocably linked to our families and in spite of post-modern individualistic tendencies toward complete autonomy, our identities cannot be understood without looking at our parents, siblings, and all those relatives whose company is formative in our lives and whose blood runs through our veins. The fullest flourishing of each of us comes from a childhood nourished by a father and a mother who loved us, cared for us, protected us, and sacrificed for us. So integral is this experience to the development of the human person that Jesus condescended to become...
The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders has 27,000 medical personnel in 60 countries, and they bring essential medicines and medical care to very many people who otherwise would go without.
The medical science they use comes from the Western industrialized countries. But no one supposes that there is something exclusivist or arrogant or intolerant about Doctors Without Borders for bringing this medical care from the West to the poor and sick in third-world countries. On the contrary, in 1999 Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work with the world’s needy.
There is an objective truth about what will heal people, and the fact that modern medicine comes from the industrialized West doesn’t alter this truth. Western medicine is prized around the world because it has a power to heal that nothing else does.
What Peter says about Christ in the First Reading...
