Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Today the Church celebrates one of her oldest feasts, commemorating the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul. I prayed at the tombs of these apostles during my time in Rome in 2005. With the body of Blessed John Paul II mere feet from me, I knelt near Peter’s tomb at the high altar of the dark and nearly empty Vatican […]
» Read moreToday, after attending a young friend’s graduation, we headed over to Cabela’s to exchange my hiking shoes. I had purchased a pair of Merrils several weeks ago, but after about 20 miles of hikes they had not broken in. In fact, they’d gotten more and more painful the more I wore them. So I exchanged them for a pair of […]
» Read moreWhile today is the feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, I really have little to add over what I wrote last year. Instead, I’d like to ruminate a bit about next year. Yesterday at Mass, I heard the word “pilgrim” an awful lot, including twice the phrase “pilgrim Church on earth” (cf. Third Eucharistic Prayer). Among other things, it got […]
» Read moreGod willing, and assuming I have calculated correctly, exactly one year from today I will be arriving in Santiago de Compostella in Spain at the end of a long pilgrimage. The two obvious questions are: What? and Why? The “what” part is easy. I will follow the medieval pilgrimage trail known as the Camino de Santiago, starting from the mountain […]
» Read moreThere is something magical and compelling about a doorway, about a crossroads. It is a time and place in between the old and the new, between past and future; the liminal space where for a moment time stands still and new possibilities, undreamt of mere moments before, now come sharply into focus. Thus says the LORD: “Stand by the roads, […]
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