Many people know that Brown vs Board of Education was decided in 1954, that the “Little Rock 9” made news in 1957, and that little Ruby Bridges made her brave walk into school in 1960. But did you know...
“Contemplative practice” is just that: practice. The existence of a practice implies that there must be a “real thing” for which we are preparing, and in the case of contemplative practice, the thing for which we are preparing is life itself. While a practice can serve as an end in itself (in as much as God can and use the space created by our practice as an opportunity for direct awareness/encounter). But, our contemplative practices really start ...
February was first officially designated as Black History Month by President Ford in 1976. The origin of the celebration began in 1926 as Negro History Week. It was expanded to a month in the 1940’s in West Virginia. By the mid 1960’s in Chicago, several events were...
Commenting on Mary’s response to the Annunciation, author and chaplain Charles W. Sidoti recognizes patience as a form of contemplative action: To understand how “having patience” can be a form of action, it is first necessary to realize that having patience is about...
Generally speaking, growth in the Divine life is a process of gradual unfolding. For instance, the process of creation took eons to get from God’s first physical manifestation to now, with creation still evolving. The salvific journey took millennia to get from Abraham to Christ, and we still await the full, final realization of our union with...
Father John Dear wrote in the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Journal Radical Grace about the non-violent impact that interfaith cooperation can make. “ At the heart of each major religion is the vision of peace, the ideal of compassion and love and justice, the fundamental truth of nonviolence.” “Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948) was the first ...
arbara Brown Taylor, an author, preacher and a member of the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes about what she calls “holy envy,” “ befriending followers of different traditions, and allowing such friendships to enrich our own faith. She summarizes an insight by ...
Contemplative practice is a school of many aspects of the Divine character, including patience. A contemplative lifestyle requires us to be patient with the unfolding of things: patient with ourselves as we learn to ...
Contemplative blogger Beth Godbee offers a writing practice for resolving to act with intention in the new year: Writing can help with deepening understandings and setting intentions. I find it helps me to have...
Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest at the Center for Action and Contemplation, explores the fruitfulness of interfaith friendship. “In no other period of history have humans had such easy and immediate access to people of other cultures and religions, often as ...
If we’re honest, any relationship that isn’t growing and changing, is instead dying. So, our prayer lives will necessarily change, both in light of God’s continual revelation to us of the Godself and our own True Selves, and in response to the circumstances of our lives as they develop. The reality and necessity of change in ...
On November 22, 2022 the World Jewish Congress reported that Pope Francis welcomed the World Jewish Congress’ launch of a historic initiative known as “Kishreinu (Hebrew for “Our Bond") intended to strengthen Jewish-Catholic ties around the globe, explaining that...
Whether we realize it or not, we all suffer one primal addiction throughout the course of our lifetimes: an addiction to our own way of thinking. Not one of us is free from our particular set of lenses through which we view the world – the perspectives inherited from culture, country, ethnic group, religious tradition, family, and past experience. So too do we find ourselves bound by our particular ways of processing the world ...
The Catholic Church defines ecumenisms as the promotion of cooperation and unity among Christians. In October of 2013, during an interview with Eugenio Scalfari an Italian journalist, Pope Francis said: “I believe , not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God.” In another interview with LaStampa (a morning newspaper in Turin), Pope Francis emphasized his commitment to ecumenism, stating: “For me, ...
his Christmas, we offer the two images below – Nativity by Joseph Mulamba-Mandangi (left) and a traditional Byzantine icon (right) – for your gazing. How does each ...
A Christmas Poem When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock. The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost,...
This final week of Advent will find the holiday hustle turned up to full throttle, but in the midst of gatherings and celebrations, the German Jesuit Karl Rahner encourages us to find time to buck the trend in order the welcome the true “Christmas spirit”: Have the courage to be alone. Only once you have ...
While there will always be temptations to dwell in great glories and insights of the past, real hope is not found lingering in the space of yesterday. Likewise, there is temptation to believe that the real good we seek is just up ahead or around the corner, in a future that...
Gifting for Peace and Justice “Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed and how hard it is not to have a place to lay one’s head. May our hearts not be closed as they were in the homes of Bethlehem. Pope Francis, Urbi et Orbi, 2017 Reflection: This Christmas, how can we
Gifting for Peace and Justice The Christmas season is all about gifts. After all, God gifted us with Emmanuel - God with us- with skin on, and we show our amazement and gratitude by giving gifts to others. But how do we ...