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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Nor do I judge according to the look of man: for man seeth those things that appear; but the Lord beholdeth the heart. –1 Samuel 16:7– Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you are like whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of
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Isn’t it amazing how many jokes there are about the hardships of married life? We’ve all heard them. Here, for example, are only four: I never knew what bliss was until I got married, and now it’s too late. My wife and I were perfectly happy for thirty years.
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As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” –Luke 9:33– Years ago, my friend Tim, an extraordinarily gentle soul, shyly told me
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