Episcopal priest Adam Bucko describes a simple prayer practice that sustains him, and reminds us that even our vocal prayer offers opportunity for contemplative practice:
One of the greatest lessons in my life...
To say it plainly, the contemplative dimension of prayer is essential to a fully actualized prayer life, one capable of embracing our communion with God. To begin to address why one can make such a bold claim, we must first ...
Our Archdiocese celebrates a major feast day this week, with the Feast of St. Louis on August 25. At moments such as these, it’s worth the effort to consider again what is intended in the naming and honoring of “holy people.” According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) in paragraph 2683, “have preceded us into...
Contemplation is a full, welcoming embrace of our union with God, and since God is an infinite source of transformative power, we should rightly expect time spent open to the Divine Presence to be transformative. However, the nature...
Contemplative prayer requires a release of control, precisely because we as human beings are not the primary actors in contemplation. Our conscious efforts to let go are in the service of welcoming God to heal, convict, dance, play, enflame, and love as God sees fit. It’s not really possible to control a boundless ...
Over the next three weeks, we will share excerpts from a work by Christian poet Sarah Trent. Contemplative practice involves a release of expectations, but that release is not always without suffering....
Romance is perhaps not a word we often use for our relationship with God. Certainly, there is a more superficial interpretation of romance, as something purely emotional, short-lived and apt to change based on preferences, that is ...
National Days of Prayer were fairly common around the time of the founding of our country, such as on May 15, 1776, when General George Washington ordered: “The Continental Congress having ordered Friday the 17th...
At the most basic level of existence, we come from God, are rooted in God, “live, move, and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28), and are called forth to God at the end of our lives. Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart even spoke of ...
The ultimate goal of the Christian life and of all spiritual practices is awareness of and abandonment to our communion with God, and the resulting transformation into an icon of the Divine Heart. Because God is infinite, the process of...
When we speak of the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, we speak of the very nature of God. Vast amounts have been said and written about the particulars of the Three Persons of the Trinity, yet when you step back from it, trying to ...
Only God is perfectly capable of keeping God's commandments, as they require perfect love (recall that Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37-40 that all Divine commandments are finally summed up in love of God and love of ...
Any “good Christian” will have been taught about their unity with God, how they are sons and daughters, princesses and princes in the family of the great King. Until one has experienced that unity, however, such talk sounds like...