Today’s reading is from the Prophet Ezekiel, one of the really interesting prophets. Ezekiel was among the first wave of refugees forced from Jerusalem and relocated to Babylon in 597 BC. No doubt he had other plans for his life. He certainly was not planning on becoming a stranger in a strange land nor becoming a prophet to the people in exile. Ezekiel’s problems started back 1 Samuel 8. Continue reading
Do you remember Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things?” It was an entertaining segment on show “House Party” which aired on CBS from 1952 to 1969. In the show’s best-remembered segment Linkletter interviewed schoolchildren between the ages of five and ten. During the segment’s 27-year run, Linkletter interviewed an estimated 23,000 children. What made the segment fascinating was the complete lack of guile. They simply said what they were thinking. No diversion, no coverups, just a bit of innocence. Today’s gospel encourages us to have that same innocence and openness, fascination and wonder. Without all the flotsam and jetsam of adult life maybe Ps 119:105 – “Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path.” – is just a little easier to discern. Then maybe in child-like fashion we can follow the path that light marks for us.
Beginning this Monday just past and continuing until August 21st, with the exception of some solemnities, feast days and memorial celebrations, our first reading is from the Prophet Ezekiel. It is a dense book with lots going on, and it is broken up into bits and bites that make it hard to know what is transpiring. And without that sense of continuity and flow, it’s difficult to understand what the Word is trying to say to us in our time. So…. let me bring you “up to speed.” Continue reading
I thought Bishop Barron’s reflection on today’s gospel was particularly good. Here is what he had to offer:
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches the necessity of constant forgiveness. Forgiveness is an act and not an attitude. It is the active repairing of a broken relationship, even in the face of opposition, violence, or indifference. When a relationship is severed, each party should, in justice, do his part to reestablish the bond.Forgiveness is the bearing of the other person’s burden, moving toward him, even when he refuses to move an inch toward you. There is something relentless, even aggressive, about forgiveness, since it amounts to a refusal ever to give up on a relationship. Simon Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus replies: “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Christians should never cease in our efforts to establish love.
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter is the Bible. It is 176 verses of love poem to God for the gift of His Word. There are many verses that are memorable and oft quoted. Perhaps at the top of the list is v.105: “Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path.” In today’s mid-morning Divine Office, here is the Psalm Prayer that accompanies this verse:
Let your Word, Father, be a lamp for our feet and light to our path, so that we may understand what you wish to teach us and follow the path your light marks for us.
I hope that each of you are lovers of God’s Word and that His wishes and path have been well illuminated…. and you have the courage to walk where that path may lead.
Today is the Feast of St. Lawrence of Rome, one of the early martyrs of the Church who died during the persecution of the Emperor Valerian in 258 AD. Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of Rome, directly serving the pope. Pope Sixtus II had been martyred just four days before. It is not clear what instigated the Valerian persecutions apart from the Roman Empire was beginning to fray at the seams with revolts in the East and the West. Perhaps the Christians were a convenient scapegoat. Continue reading
Always fascinated by the origin of words, today’s fare from the “Word of the Day” by Merriam Webster brought to my attention the word “trivial.” We moderns use the word to describe something barely worth mentioning. We adopted the word trivial from Latin trivialis in the 16th century. Then the meaning was just what its Latin ancestor meant: “found everywhere, commonplace.” But the source of trivialis is about something more specific: trivium, from tri- (three) and via (way), meaning “crossroads; place where three roads meet.” The link between the two presumably has to do with the commonplace sorts of things a person is likely to encounter at a busy crossroads. If we returned to the original meaning then Starbucks would become trivial – no less important to modern life – but “trivial” all the same.
Image credit: Dom J @ pexel.com
This is what a stellar nursery looks like. The “cliffs” in the image are 7 light years tall, just in case you wanted to know. You read more about this image at NASA.gov Below is an embedded image from gettyimages. The cost for the image is $150-$750 (other than non-commercial embedded image). Given that the original is Public Domain, I am wondering on what basis they are able to license it? Did they enhance the image in a way that allows them to commercially benefit from the image? Copyright laws makes sense in most cases, but (to my mind), not so much here. This picture ran in lots of online news sources. Did they license the gettyimage? I know that several national publications also claimed copyright protection on the image – seemingly with themselves has the holder of the license.
Somewhat as a consolation, Getty does provide for the ability to embed images in non-commercial site such as this and does so without cost.
Embed from Getty ImagesAlthough often cited, but rarely defined, we are generally familiar with the “law of unintended consequences. Prohibition in the 1920s United States, originally enacted to suppress the alcohol trade, drove many small-time alcohol suppliers out of business and consolidated the hold of large-scale organized crime over the illegal alcohol industry. Since alcohol was still popular, criminal organizations producing alcohol were well-funded and hence also increased their other activities. Similarly, the War on Drugs, intended to suppress the illegal drug trade, instead increased the power and profitability of drug cartels who became the primary source of the products. Funding of the Afghan Mujahideen and the destabilization of Afghanistan contributing to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The introduction of exotic animals and plants for food, for decorative purposes, or to control unwanted species often leads to more harm than good done by the introduced species – think rabbits in Australia and kudzu in the Southern USA.
Continue readingOn this day in 1991 the World Wide Web (www) made its public debut. Not to be confused with the Internet that has been developing since the 1960s or with the “birthday” of www, but when the underlying technology and software was made available outside of CERN* where it was proposed and quickly developed with a goal of being a document management system for CERN researchers. It became much more. For those old enough to remember here are some early web essentials: Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, Java and the used-to-be dominant Internet Explorer from Microsoft
CERN – a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world – located in Switzerland.
