Posts Tagged ‘Love’

After a decade of marriage, these are the wedding vows I’d now make

Tuesday, August 9th, 2016

Basically, most people’s wedding vows have the same gist, right? “I’ll love you forever” say Bella Ellwood-Clayton “I wonder, knowing what we do now, 10 years later, what new set of vows would we make?” she asks. Here are the first of 17 things she would say now: 1. I will forgive you, endlessly. Partnerships of Read more

Lust and compromise do not make marriage

Friday, June 17th, 2016

“Unrealistic lust is a great place to kick off” a relationship. That’s the counsel the advice columnist for the liberal English newspaper The Guardian gives to a woman who doesn’t know whether to move in with a boyfriend who won’t even say that he loves her. Save “duty sex” for later, Mariella Frostrup continues. “The Read more

The mercy of shutting up

Friday, April 29th, 2016

Amid the controversy surrounding Pope Francis’s recent apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), one extraordinary section has been all but overlooked. In chapter 4, “Love in Marriage,” the Holy Father offers a moving exegesis of that popular wedding reading, St. Paul’s ode to love from 2 Corinthians. It’s about more than marriage, though; Read more

Julian of Norwich and a life full of love

Tuesday, April 26th, 2016

Growing up in an evangelical Protestant family, I didn’t hear much about the Christian mystics. My religious background tended to equate mysticism with occult practices, overlooking the mystics’ real emphasis: a direct experience of God. Yet, I sensed that the divine was a constant, companionable presence, someone who was simultaneously both within and all around Read more

Aspects of Mercy

Friday, March 18th, 2016

Mercy is a God-word, liquid in that it seems to take the shape of any container open to it. Poured without a container it can soak in a random way, refreshing dryness and encouraging new growth, regardless of the boundaries of belief systems. As Scripture says, it falls like the rain on all. Little wonder Read more

Love and disobedience: Martin Luther King and the Greeks

Tuesday, February 9th, 2016

In “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” the soaring and chilling speech he delivered the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. ponders the thought of life in other places and times. Among other eras in history, he considers the prime of classical Athens, when he could have enjoyed the company of luminaries “around the Read more

Plans for Pontifical Franciscan University in Rome by 2018

Friday, December 4th, 2015

The heads of four Franciscan communities have announced plans to establish a Pontifical Franciscan University in Rome by 2018. This was announced by the Ministers General of the First Order in a letter dated November 29. “As an expression of the academic unity of the Franciscan family, this project will be committed to an emphasis Read more

Pornography: society’s common cold

Friday, May 8th, 2015

I’ve recently discovered that a pornography addiction is now becoming as popular in our modern society as the common cold. It never ceases to swarm around, mercilessly infecting unsuspecting victims. A couple of weeks ago I had a good friend of mine confide in me about her and her boyfriend’s current battles with long term Read more

Pope Francis: we can’t be book-keepers of God’s love

Tuesday, December 16th, 2014

God is like a mother, He loves us unconditionally. However, too often we want to take control of this grace in a kind of a spiritual book-keeping, Pope Francis said during his homily at Mass this morning in the chapel at Casa Santa Marta. “God’s closeness is such that he is presented like a mother, Read more

Five ways faith may make marriage more healthy

Friday, December 12th, 2014

“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. … Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”  I Corinthians 13 The words of the apostle Paul are a familiar text at Read more