What can Christmas teach us about the importance of popular piety in our prayer and liturgical life? Those of us who have any recollection of Roman Catholic worship before Vatican II, remember a prayer pattern filled with devotions, populated by statues, and seasoned with endless sacramentals. As a Catholic grade-schooler I remember the rosaries, the […]
From the Archives
From the Archives · September / October 2020
Seven Ways to Deepen Your Prayer Life
“For the past 15 years I’ve been attempting to figure out how to pray. I’ve searched for every ‘Praying for Dummies’ book published, but have come to learn they aren’t much help. Everyone has suggestions on how to pray, from the great spiritual writers to my grandmother. Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to […]
From the Archives · July / August 2020
Formation for Peace In an Age of Conflict
Brother Gros gave these remarks at the Fuller Conference on Just Peacemaking in 2011. They have been edited for this publication. This article appeared in Emmanuel magazine, May/June 2013 (Vol 119 Issue 3). When I taught high school religion, I would begin my course on Christian social responsibility with a film on the horrors of […]
From the Archives · May / June 2020
Conversion: Turning Toward the World
Conversion, says the author, does not imply a flight from the world, but an ability to embrace it the same way that Jesus did. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son. I want to begin with a story. It is the story of a precocious child growing up in a somewhat […]
From the Archives · March / April 2020
Eucharist as Theodicy
This article was originally published in Emmanuel in 2011, issue 117, number 2. Christian thought about suffering cannot be reduced to explaining it away, in however philosophically sophisticated a way. It must rather embrace the fact that suffering lies at the heart of its formative story. (Frances M. Young1) Our opening words come from the […]