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Pseudo-Homilies 16 – Corpus Domini

This feast marks the closing of the holiday season. I’ve always appreciated this wholesome, rich experience: a sequence of celebrations that manages to present newer and newer peaks of interest, significant and emotional moments, without tiring. It all begins with Lent, which is appropriately long: a preparation through acts of penance, which helps your faith grow and adds to the eventual enjoyment of the Easter feast itself. You get an appetizer with Palms Sunday. Then there’s the Easter Triduum, intense! And then a long Easter time, which even gets a double ending, with Ascension and Pentecost. And even then we’re not done yet! I understand it wasn’t always like that…

Pseudo-Homilies From a Layman -3- Palm Sunday

In this third article I will dip my foot in the heart of the Holy Week which is about to begin, but only momentarily, then I’ll steer to a different takeaway message. PALM SUNDAY: PASSION OF THE LORD – YEAR A Today I want to focus only on the introductory reading for this festivity, leaving for another day the magnificent account of the Passion, so full of ideas and inspiration. People acclaim Jesus as a great prophet; while he’s entering Jerusalem the crowd prepares the way for him by spreading tree branches on the street (hence our traditional use of palms and olive trees for the celebration). Many…

When even the Pope yelds: Euthanasia for a civilization

We are part of a grand scheme The election of Pope Francis was a shock to me, second only to the death of my closest relatives. When I heard the name “Bergoglio” proclaimed from the balcony, I felt like I had been teleported to a parallel universe, to the other side of the mirror; a place where everything seems slightly out of place. Just slightly. Don’t get me wrong. This event may represent just a step of a wider process: the long and gradual decay of western civilization. But non-Catholics may miss the importance of the Church in Rome as a force capable of halting -or at least slowing down- the fall. The last…