Brad Bursa

Practical Wisdom (Part II) My first year of teaching was a blur. This is is the case for most first year teachers. It’s just overwhelming, like trying to drink from a firehose. I don’t remember many of the details from that year, but I do know, taken as a whole, it was an intensely formative…

Practical Wisdom (Part I) Prefatory Note: The Desert Fathers, the hermits who stand at the origins of monasticism, are known for their sayings. These pieces of wisdom were practical bits of common sense and they’ve been handed on from generation to generation. As Thomas Merton puts it, “The Fathers were humble and silent men, and…

Joseph Ratzinger on the meaning of the word. Prefatory Note: In a previous post, I announced that I was beginning a year-long effort to articulate the gospel according to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. This is the second installment in that series. Growing up, my religious education refrained from talking about sin. Mine was a kind of…

A Christmas Reflection I was ready to deliver the line in my talk when he walked in. Just as I was talking about how God has taken flesh and how God has a face, the door that always gets stuck got stuck and started rattling. Someone was there. Someone wanted in. And, as I delivered…

A primer on the method of divine reading. Those who know me well know that Lectio Divina is part of my time of daily personal prayer and also part of the way I do ministry. Lectio Divina is a way to read and pray with the Bible. These two Latin words mean “Divine Reading.” The…

Reflections on the necessity of prayer and a few resources. Why spend time praying? Well, for one, we pray because Jesus told us to. In Mt 6:8, he says, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” The Father, he knows everything. So the Psalmist declares, “Your eyes saw me unformed; in your…

Seeking Christ with Pope Benedict XVI It is Advent. It is always Advent. In 1964, Joseph Ratzinger preached three sermons in the Cathedral at Münster in an effort to answer what being a Christian means today. It was Advent at the time, and this comes through in his reflections. Advent does not celebrate the past…

An analogy for the Christian life. Consider the pencil. To be honest, I never did. Until I read an obscure line in Pope Benedict XVI’s Last Testament, which says: As a young lad I wrote in pencil and then stayed with it. The pencil has an advantage in that one can erase things. If I…

If everyone could just stop complaining… My boys had pulled out the metal rod that controls our fireplace’s rotary damper. Again. When they tried to fix it on their own by shoving it back in with all their might, they managed to wedge it into the other parts and got it stuck. So I got…

On the modern movement from freedom to license. I was young. Twenty-two, to be exact. And I was teaching high school sophomores. My baby-face was unhelpful in this situation, as I looked younger than some of my students. Before the year started, I got all fired up after watching Dead Poets Society and decided I…