Dear Friends,
As I write this column, we are coming quickly upon the Fourth of July, when we as a nation celebrate our independence and freedom. It is this freedom which has provided tremendous room for our flourishing as a human race and as a nation, but it is a delicate freedom, built upon the presupposition that we as a nation will choose to exercise our freedom in a way that moves forward toward what is best.
Tag: column
Encontrar la belleza en el sacerdocio
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| Esta columna es la comunicación del Obispo con los fieles de la Diócesis de Madison. Cualquier circulación más amplia va más allá de la intención del Obispo. |
Queridos amigos:
“El amor por Cristo nos obliga” (2 Cor 5:14)”, dice la segunda carta a los Corintios. Ese amor, que se ha manifestado en la persona de Cristo, es la cosa más hermosa que podría haber. Es hermosa porque es el amor de Dios. Él es amor y Él es la belleza misma.
Y durante este Año de la Fe hemos estado contemplando desde varias perspectivas la belleza del Señor, como una forma de invitar a la gente a encontrarse con Él de modo que cambie la vida a través de la Nueva Evangelización.
Luego de haber celebrado recientemente la ordenación de tres nuevos y maravillosos sacerdotes, me gustaría decir algunas cosas sobre la belleza del sacerdocio, que compartí con quienes estuvieron presentes esa gran noche. El amor que nos impele y su belleza son puestos de manifiesto de manera especial en el sacramento de las Órdenes Sagradas.
La belleza del rito de ordenación
El sacerdocio es hermoso porque Jesús recrea al sacerdote de una forma nueva de modo que el ser anterior muere. En la ordenación, el sacerdote se postra ante el altar. Está acostado allí como si muriera y se levantase con la resurrección, hacia la novedad de haber sido cambiado en lo más profundo de su alma a imagen de Cristo Sacerdote.
Finding beauty in the priesthood
Dear Friends,
“The love of Christ compels us (2 Cor 5:14),” says the second letter to the Corinthians. That love, which is made manifest to us in the person of Christ, is the most beautiful thing that there could ever be. It is beautiful because God is love. He is love and He is beauty itself.
Blessed Mother will help crush evil
Dear Friends,
For those who are willing to see, it doesn’t take much looking to notice the evil that surrounds us. Lies and deceit, violence and murder, hatred and malice, and more and more often, vice treated as virtue.
Focusing on death, life, and mercy
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| This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop. |
“Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous: The Prince of Life, who died, reigns immortal.”
“Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining. Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!”
(Easter Sequence – Roman Missal, 1964 translation).
I choose those two lines to focus upon in this Easter Season, because they are exactly reflective of the themes that our Holy Father, Pope Francis struck during many of the early days of Easter. He has asked the question and raised the issue from Scripture, “why do you seek the living among the dead (Lk 24:5)?”
“Death and life have contended,” and life won out, so, the Holy Father asks, echoing the message of the angel, “why do you seek the living among the dead?”
A second point that the Holy Father has focused upon is reassuring us, once again, that no one with a good and open heart is outside the bounds of the mercy of Jesus Christ, won by His death on the Cross, and confirmed by His Resurrection.
And so, we’ve got two words, or groups of words: “death and life,” and “mercy,” on which we should meditate in this Easter season.
Where is mercy in the world?
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Christ died that there might be mercy. Let’s calmly look at our world today, and let’s look around for mercy.
Holy Week and protecting true marriage
Dear friends,
As we make our way through Holy Week to Easter, one of the most remarkable things we encounter is a startling oxymoron, a seeming contradiction, in terms of Jesus’ death on the Cross as ugly and tortuous, and yet beautiful.
It’s one of the most tremendous mysteries of our faith — horrible ugliness and tortuousness, behind which is concealed the most beautiful Truth in all of human history.
Holy Week itself maintains the juxtaposition of these two realities. Our liturgies for Holy Week open with beauty on Palm Sunday, with the procession of Jesus into Jerusalem.
Beauty helps prepare us for Heaven
Last summer, I was honored to be part of a Conference of the Napa Institute with regard to Catholic leadership. There I addressed the relationship between freedom, beauty, and feelings, in the context of the truth that democracy requires authentic freedom on the part of those who are blessed to live out that form of government. I’ve touched briefly on some of those themes here before, but would like to examine them anew.
The triumph of the Cross and our salvation
Dear Friends,
This past week we celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. There is no shortage of crosses in our lives, and we pray for one another and lift one another up as we encounter those crosses. It is through those crosses, which some of you experience right now, that can come the Resurrection victory. So engage the struggle to embrace your cross and do not forget the triumph which comes by way of our following the Lord.
Sitting at the feet of Jesus: Humbling ourselves to be open to wisdom
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| This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop. |
In this past weekend’s Gospel (Jn 6:51-58), we hear Jesus say, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.” What is Jesus talking about, that he’s going to give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink? Does He think we’re cannibals?
Mary, the Mystical Rose, is link to God
Dear Friends,
This past Sunday we heard the moving Gospel passage of “the vine and the branches,” wherein Jesus makes clear that He, Himself, is the true vine to which we must all remain attached, and only through which can we bear any fruit.