Another Lent is already upon us. It hardly seems possible. When we think of Lent, we usually think of “giving up” something. We ask each other, “What are you going to give up for Lent this year?” Yet I believe this approach somehow misses the mark. Lent is not a
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I taught sophomores at Bethlehem Catholic High School for twenty-four years. To this day, I sometimes have doubts as to whether I accomplished anything at all through my teaching. Did my students learn anything from me? I am uncertain. Back in those days, it sometimes seemed that the only tangible
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You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain. –Exodus 20:7 & Deuteronomy 5:11– [A]nd holy is his name. –Luke 1:49– Whenever family counselor Gary Smalley speaks, he is always engaging,
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Whoever wishes to become great shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to become first among you shall be the slave of all. –Mark 10:43-44– I once had the privilege of living in a rectory with Father Joel Kiefer. Before being ordained a priest, he spent six years in
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After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” –Luke
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But for them, it was only the beginning of the Real Story. All their life in this world and their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has
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Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure: Married in haste, we may repent at leisure. –William Congreve, The Old Batchelour (1693)– Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards. –Ben Franklin– As a Catholic student at Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA), in the late 1970s, in
Read moreWhen I was growing up, Dad would sometimes take Mom and us kids to California in the summertime to visit his parents. Grandpa and Grandma Ezaki lived on a farm in Kingsburg. They raised grapes and peaches via irrigation because the sun would become so hot, it would bake the
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Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 18:3– In the summer of 1968, Dad took Mom and us six kids on a three-week visit to Japan, his ancestral homeland. Our family toured as many Shinto
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Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” –Luke 9:23– If I am not mistaken, Philip Yancey declares in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, that this saying of Our Lord
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