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Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Sacred Heart – by Brie Schulze 10″x10″ oil on wood panel

The human heart is this most noble and precious organ from which life and love flow like blood through our veins.  Our heart is our hidden core, our most important, intimate, and personal identity.  If you never discover someone’s heart, you will never really know them – and even when you’ve known and loved someone for a long time their heart remains hidden like a secret that they must choose to reveal again and again and you must choose to rediscover constantly.  Our heart remains hidden within our body, and it is only by loving and becoming vulnerable that it can be know by others. read more

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Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

It is important often to recall the simplicity of the Christian vocation:   Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself.

CHRYSOSTOM:

But now God has made us such that nothing can subdue us. For our hands are bound but not our tongue, since nothing can bind the tongue but cowardice and unbelief. Where these are not, though you fasten chains upon us, the preaching of the gospel is not bound.

Any cloud passing over our skies may from time to time make us gloomy. But Paul’s heart had no such storms sweeping over it. Or better, there did sweep over him, and often, many storms, but his day was not darkened. Rather in the midst of the temptations and dangers the light shone out. Thus when bound with his chain he kept exclaiming, “The word of God is not bound.” Thus continually by means of that tongue the Word was sending forth its rays. read more

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Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Sketch by Brie Schulze

The burning bush is one of the most important images of God throughout revelation.  Marriage is the most fundamental institution created by God: before even the fall of humanity.  Jesus draws a striking parallel between the two when he explains the resurrection to the Sadducees.  The resurrection is fullness of life, life beyond death, life that defeats death entirely.  Marriage is seen as this kind of fullness of human life – as full as we can understand it here below.  The Sadducees would argue that if marriage no longer makes sense at the resurrection, then there is a fullness of life that can never be recovered after death.  Marriage is supposed to produce a certain oneness: “the two shall become one flesh.”  But when one dies, the other does not necessarily die and must continue living their human life as best they can – sometimes remarrying in an attempt to recover that fullness of life.  What institution will replace marriage for the resurrected? read more