Cenacle Journal
Posted in Lent, Mercy, Weakness, Power on Mar 10th, 2010
Spring is the season when the live oaks drop last year’s leaves as the new ones begin to come in. This means that we have huge quantities of leaves in the yard, at the same time that quantities of golden tree pollen settle on cars and everything else.
So I was in the yard, wielding [...]
Posted in Acceptance, Lent, Mercy on Feb 17th, 2010
By what boundless mercy, my Savior,
have you allowed me to become a member of your body?
Me, the unclean, the defiled, the prodigal.
How is it that you have clothed me
in the brilliant garment,
radiant with the splendor of immortality,
that turns all my members into light?
Symeon the New Theologian, trans. by John Anthony McGuckin,
The Book of Mystical Chapters:
Meditations [...]
“Oh, Mercy! … Wherever I turn my thoughts,
I find nothing but mercy.”
(St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogues 30)
Dear God,
Your mercy is like the air to me. I breathe mercy, I walk through mercy, I get up in the morning and go to bed at night wrapped in your mercy.
While my own hold on you is tenuous, [...]
Posted in Mercy on Jun 7th, 2007
Mother Church has a vastly inclusive embrace. She is large enough to welcome people of all races, nations, economic strata, and personality. Her lap is capacious enough to hold opinions and theologies and spiritualities of many stripes, all within the creed-professing, Bible-reading, Pope-honoring holy Roman Catholic membership.
However, there is an unfortunate contingent of Catholics who [...]
I ran across the following quotation from an interview with the theologian James Alison:
At the resurrection, what the apostolic group began to understand was that there is no violence in God, no wrath, no desire for retribution, no need for vengeance or satisfaction” (James Alison, “Befriending a Vengeful God,” Encounter, October 24, 2004).
Violence and vengeance [...]
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