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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.
Who would play first base if I put together a baseball team of priests and religious?
Naturally, I spent the better part of a day thinking about this while I was on retreat at the wonderful St. Louis Abbey, a Benedictine abbey in western St. Louis County, this past week. (Side note: When I was younger, the monk's high school was my first choice, but , as providence would have it, I did not get in. I went to another school and thrived, but, who knows, had I not been such a goof ball as a child and teen, I might have been a monk.)
Upon returning to the world of information and technology, I watched Abbott and Costello's timeless skit about baseball players' names and it got the ball rolling.
What follows is my dream baseball team put together according to my stereotypes of religious communities. As my student master was fond of telling me my first...
I preface this by saying that I was expecting something...greater...when I heard that the villain in this movie would be the Mandarin - Iron Man's traditional arch-nemesis. It usually requires more story dexterity and depth than the ordinary superhero film when the arch-nemesis appears. As of 2013, Christopher Nolan's Batman series with its Heath Ledger-iteration of the Joker sets the bar pretty high. Iron Man 3 did not meet these standards and, even more sadly, fell far below them insofar as it did not deal at all with the psychology of Iron Man or the Mandarin in any memorable detail. Rather, what we got was a funnier and more internally-consistent version of The Expendables. Lots of fire, overly dramatic wisecracks (my favorite over-the-top moment was an analogy between...
Ve el quinto video de la serie "Pruebatelo"--una serie en que los jovenes se juntan para conversar sobre temas importantes como la vida, la familia, el amor, la iglesia, la fe.
Watch our fifth "short film" from the series "Pruebatelo"----a series in which young people get together to discuss important topics like life, family, love, the church and faith.
Para mas informacion y eventos, ve nuestra pagina en facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pruebatelo
Ve el sexto video de la serie "Pruebatelo"--una serie en que los jovenes se juntan para conversar sobre temas importantes como la vida, la familia, el amor, la iglesia, la fe.
Watch our sixth "short film" from the series "Pruebatelo"----a series in which young people get together to discuss important topics like life, family, love, the church and faith.
Guilt and shame are not the same thing. Brene Brown says the latter interferes with our connection to others because it creates a fear of disconnection. How would St. Thomas Aquinas evaluate this distinction?
In 2003, I traded Albert Pujols for Roy Oswalt. Worst fantasy trade I ever made.
Oswalt wasn't terrible but he only pitched 21 games, winning 10 while striking out 108 batters and posting an ERA under 3.00. Good but not spectacular.
Pujols, on the other hand, was Albert Pujols. He had a .359 average, 43 home runs, 124 RBI, and 137 runs -- 137 runs!!!
Fantasy baseball (and all fantasy sports for that matter) provides the casual fan to the stat guru an opportunity to build and manage a team. Players are drafted, added and dropped, traded, started and benched, sat for strategic purposes. Trades are proposed, rejected, counter-offered, and made.
Some play like it's a life-and-death situation, agonizing over every little detail in the box scores and scouting reports; others play with a more laissez-faire attitude, going with their gut or sticking with the same line up every day of the season. There is one objective...
Brene Brown's talks have been seen by almost 10 million people. At the core of her psychology is our thirst for connection. What would St. Thomas say about that?
6:14a.m. I walk out of the chapel and look out the window. I see the St. Louis skyline, the arch and all the other really tall buildings of downtown. They are black silhouettes with dotted lights of white, yellow, red, and blue. But that’s not what catches my attention nor what makes me pause to take in the sight. It was the horizon behind it and the colors rising from the bottom up marking a new day. Red-ish, orange-ish, and yellow-ish blending in with green-ish and blue-ish above that. It’s that magnificent, peaceful, serene, majestic moment of the day right before the sun begins to rise over the horizon. You know it’s coming and you see that it will, but it hasn’t quite yet. It’s that moment or two when you can see the sun rise before it rises. There is a twinge of excitement and anticipation, and, at least for one brief moment, you don’t want to move and give in to the energy associated with it and allow the hustle and bustle of another day...
“It is finished.” These final three words announce the destruction of sin’s power over the world and the restoration of man’s true relationship with God. Yet, these words are not spoken lightly. They consummate a life of work poured out in love for the sake of God’s plan and our salvation.
If this was the moment, and you hung on the cross as Christ, could you say, “It is finished?" The great question we must ask ourselves, the greatest question of our lives, should be whether we have finished all that God has asked us to do. Our entire lives should be spent in that discernment. “Lord, what is your will for me?” The great pitfall, if we are not careful, is to fail to listen to what God says when He shares His plan with us. Or worse, we may even try to make up our own answer to the question.
I can only imagine Jesus’ disciples at this point. They have been following him around Judea,...
Side Effects was a film that I did not want to see. I've seen far too many "politically correct" films attacking, 
for example, "Big Tobacco" or "Big Fast Food," and they're all the same. They tend to be shallow, linear, and ideologically-driven.
Side Effects was none of those things.
Instead, what I discovered was something completely different which kept me engrossed in the story. While there were some weaknesses in acting or cinematography, these were made up for far and away by the quality of the story itself. Everything is deceptive and nothing is what it seems.
The movie tells the story, initially, of a couple - Emily (Rooney Mara) and Martin (Channing Tatum) - who have fallen upon hard times. Martin, a stock...
