Safe Haven

I read this in St. John's first letter. You might know someone that wants to be holy, but the vast majority of the shame they feel is when they fail themselves . The fact of God's loving primacy tells them that the gift of their faith is real. The whole matter then becomes a conversation about what they are afraid of, and that's what needs to happen. The appeal of Calvinism for some people is a cover for mediocrity and self-hatred. If God loves us, we haven't the right to deny it.

A small town in Ohio had a steel mill that once employed twelve thousand people. Now the company employs 900. Meanwhile, the makers of epi-pens jacked up the price from about 5 bucks to over 600, because they can. Don't talk to me about socialism; if you don't have an ethics that says these things aren't right, your opinions about the excesses of totalitarianism don't matter much to me. People wonder why Bernie Sanders is so popular. We can argue about the prudence or not of particular actions after we recognize and establish the dignity of every human person. I can recall a young Senator who spoke eloquently of two Americas, one for the rich, and one for the poor, lamenting this reality. He also warned of the dangers of state socialism. His ethics may have been faulty in other areas, but he was right on both counts. If there is anything good in a new nationalism, it must begin with the dignity of the person, and the dignity of work. Though peaceful global relatio...

Not all of us get to be heroes of a certain sort. We could probably easily find a story of a soldier who sacrificed his life for his brothers-in-arms. That's real virtue and heroism, but absent any other information, it would be natural virtue. To say that it does not merit salvation before God is not to say it is worthless. That is one error. Another error is to say that a person by his or her natural power can please God. That is called "Pelagianism." The Church has always taught rather that salvation consists in friendship with God, and that friendship happens by grace. We can say that grace is the presence and power of God that elevates man above his natural powers, into friendship and likeness with God. The wise people of old say that friends have to share something to be friends. Grace allows us to traverse an infinite distance to be friends with God. This is no small thing, actually. It could be a mercy of God that we Catholics, even of the faithful sort, are as...

I was conversing with a friend in a religious order last night, and I suppose it's all very well to talk about mystical union with Christ, but in fact, if we find ourselves grappling with basic obedience for the balance of our lives, we are like most people. The truth is that I am small. I'm double-minded, and I'm weak. There are moments when the evil looks like the good, and the good like the evil. I do not have a knowledge problem, I have a desire problem. If I had a knowledge problem, I'd be considerably less guilty. Maybe you know someone like that. This is today's great consolation: that in the moments where he makes our sins as though they had never occurred, he pours His love into our hearts, by which our desire for Him also increases. May this love increase more than we ask or imagine. Amen.