Lent

Turn away from sin and follow the Gospel

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That’s frequently said by priests and others who administer ashes to the faithful on Ash Wednesday. Today is the beginning of Lent. What is Lent and what does it mean in 2020? What is sin? Everyone might have a different answer on that. How about lack of universal healthcare? That’s a sin. What about income … Read more

Prelude

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This morning I drove toward Mt. Irenaeus in with a hint of snow in the air and a pall of overcast. It didn’t look like an idyllic Palm Sunday. Our liturgy began in the library under Holy Peace Chapel. Fr. Dan Riley, OFM blessed the palms and invited us to process outside, along the path and up the steps to the chapel. As we walked we sang, “oh Sacred Head surrounded by crown of piercing thorns, oh bleeding head so wounded, reviled and put to scorn…” It’s a song I remember well from my youth. The words of the song are ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux. That information was new to me but the symbolism was not lost as I am a frequent visitor to Trappist Abbeys.

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Awaiting on you all

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One of my favorite musicians is and was George Harrison. He was the mystical Beatle. Harrison more than Lennon and McCartney seemed to be most in touch with the world around him.  That might be very unfair to Ringo Starr and if so I apologize. One of my favorite Harrison lyrics is “Awaiting on You All.” Last night I was listening once again to the Concert for Bangladesh and the song played. Lent is a time of renewal for many people and those lyrics speak volumes to me about renewal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-2MthG190]

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The light of the world

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Today was a beautiful, sunny day as I drove toward Mt. Irenaeus. Today’s Gospel was about the young man born blind who regains his sight as a result of a miracle that Jesus performs. Blindness is always assumed to be a physical defect and nowadays no one even assumes that the victim got his disease through his sin or the sin of a parent. In the time of Jesus such was not the case. We’ve made some progress since then. We understand that blindness is caused my many conditions, but that sin is not one of them.

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Hosea

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I will lead you into the desert, and there I will speak to your heart. Hosea 2:14 Campaign 2008 and the news media in general have driven me into the desert. I’m really blessed because the onslaught of media both print, internet and televised has driven me to silence and contemplation.  It’s been a gradual … Read more

Guns not butter

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Tonight’s Olean Times Herald had a front page item that proclaimed that our new federal budget will break Medicare. The Times Herald is a pretty conservative paper. They have been unabashed apologists for much of the Bush agenda. Earlier today I read that for the first time in American history the defense budget has 12 zeros in it. That’s a one-trillion dollar budget for war. We’re not really defending anything except the status quo. The status quo in the United States is the military-industrial complex. We’re not fighting conventional forces yet we continue to fund battleships, aircraft carriers, submarines as if we were still locked head to head with the former Soviet Union.

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