-
Breaking the Silence
Today we commemorate the breaking of the Word’s silence. The Word had freely confined itself to the mysterious quiet of the womb, foreshadowing the willful silencing of the same Word in the tomb. Today is Christmas, when the Word broke its silence not with a word of wisdom or an eloquent soliloquy, but with the…
-
No Worldly Ambition
He more or less asked me what I was doing working for four parishes in the middle of nowhere. And, I get it. I have a PhD. I’ve worked for the Archdiocese. I’ve taught at and run theology programs at a university. I suppose I was on a certain trajectory in his mind, probably involving…
-
Our Method Is Coffee
Once, when pressed for his catechetical method for bringing individuals into the Church, my friend Lawain McNeil responded: “coffee.” Coffee is his method, and by this he means that the person and understanding the person in charity indicates the best way forward in accompaniment. He does this over coffee. So coffee is the method. For…
-
On Culture and Idolizing It
The moment you idealize culture and pursue culture as an end unto itself, you kill the possibility of its coming to fruition. Culture is not contrived so much as it is discovered within the personalities involved in and dynamism of a common pursuit. To idealize it and pursue the ideal usually amounts to idolatry. When…
-
Prepare Him Room: It’s Christmas Again
“She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). For many of us, these words cushion sweet, sentimental, and (probably) cartoonish images we have of a snuggly baby Jesus in soft blankets. But, with these words, Luke actually depicts a…
-
Problem
In Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton writes: In our age everything has to be a “problem.” Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves. Merton…
-
The World Upside Down
The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead…He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands. — GK Chesterton With…
-
Few Words
Today, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, as I read the Gospel and worked into some lectio divina, I was struck, not by a particular word or phrase, but by how few words Mary speaks in the dialogue with the angel Gabriel. Mary speaks three sentences to the angel’s eight. Mary speaks 30 words…
-
Christmas: The encounter between our desire and God’s response
A quiet ache — a nostalgia for the infinite — resides deep in every human heart. We tend to forget about it. The noise and activity of our lives drowns it out. Our masks cover it up. Our attempts to control and curate every aspect of life dry it up. We pack our schedules to…
-
Tattoo the Soul
I’m one of those rare millennials without a tattoo. Okay, maybe not. A quick Google search tells me that 41-47% of my generation is tatted. I’m in the majority. Still, tattoos ride on the bodies of something like 32% of Gen X and only 13% of Baby Boomers. So, there’s a huge uptick in ink…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Brad Bursa 