From Season to Season

The utterance of one who hears what God says, and knows what the Most High knows, Of one who sees what the Almighty sees, enraptured, and with eyes unveiled. I see him, though not now; I behold him, though not near: A star shall advance from Jacob, and a staff shall rise from Israel. - Numbers 24:16-17   With today’s prophecy from Balaam ( Numbers 24:15-17a ), a non-Israelite prophet, our attention is drawn more and more to who Jesus is: the star rising from Jacob and the staff for Israel (cf. Isaiah 11:1 ).    Even a brief reading of the Old Testament will reveal that the people of Israel were a hope-filled, expectant people. Israel’s longing for the Messiah was shaped by the ways that God had manifested his power throughout their history, and prophets, like Isaiah, Amos, and later, John the Baptist never stopped reminding the people that God was coming to save his own. But, Israel also recognized that God had already shown his power and “visited his ...

The end of September and beginning of October are marked by a series of memorials and commemorations that serve to highlight the catholicity of the Church. From the Bohemian ruler Wenceslaus and the Filipino layman Lawrence Ruiz (a husband and father) and his martyred companions from Japan (on September 28) to the great biblical scholar and Father of the Church Jerome (on September 30), the cloistered missionary-at-heart Thérèse of Liseux (on October 1) and Carthusian founder Bruno (on October 6), to the Indiana foundress Theodora Guerin (on October 3) and the Louisana pastor and missionary Francis Seelos (on October 5) to the beloved Francis of Assisi (October 4), these days (which also include celebrations of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael [September 29] and the Guardian Angels [October 2]) remind us that the possibility for true holiness isn’t limited to one way of life, gender, or historical epoch. Saint Theodora Guerin (d. 1856) The Foundress of the ...

There is a well-known phrase that is often used as a sort of “proof text” against the vice of greed: “You cannot love both God and money.” At the surface, God and money aren’t incompatible. In fact, Saint Augustine even encouraged people to provide for their eternal happiness by using the goods of the earth (cf. Discourses 359, 10). But the parable of the dishonest steward, from which this quotation is adapted, doesn’t use the word “money” (which does appear in certain popular translations of Scripture). Rather, the word used in the parable is “mammon,” a Phoenician term for economic security and success in business. Reflecting on mammon , Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “we might say that riches are shown as the idol   to which everything is sacrificed in order to attain one’s own material success; hence, this economic success becomes a person’s true god.”   The Dishonest Steward from  Evangelicae Historiae Imagines (1594)   More than just making an ...