Why? Because that is one of the things that he did...from Catholic Online - Saints - St. John of God:
"In Spain he spent his days unloading ship cargoes and his nights visiting churches and reading spiritual books. Reading gave him so much pleasure that he decided that he should share this joy with others. He quit his job and became a book peddler, traveling from town to town selling religious books and holy cards. A vision at age 41 brought him to Granada where he sold books from a little shop. (For this reason he is patron saint of booksellers and printers.) "
In honor of his feast, let me recommend a few books...
If you want to get more out of Mass or you aren't sure what is going on at Mass, let me recommend my bestselling book:
The How-To Book of the Mass: Everything You Need to Know but No One Ever Taught You
Also if you are new to the Rosary or want an aid in helping you meditate on the traditional mysteries and the luminous, again a book that I wrote with Amy:
Praying the Rosary: With the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, & Glorious Mysteries
If you're tired of hearing the "Jesus Seminar" view of the NT then let me recommend this very readable book on Following Jesus by N.T. Wright:
Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship
If you would like to know more about what it means to have a patron saint, read Rick Medina's excellent little book on having Saint Philomena as a patron saint:
I Ask St. Philomena: The Power of Praying with Saints
Confused about who Jesus was? The perfect overview of who Jesus is and how his passion saved us:
Jesus the Christ
Read The Da Vinci Code and confused about the view of Christianity it presented? Amy's new book answers all of your questions:
De-Coding Da Vinci
Throught the intercession of St. John of God, may you be led to purchase the book that'll meet your spiritual needs for this Lenten season!
Monday, March 8, 2004
It Wasn't the Americans who Kidnapped Aristide...
The locals think it was the "spirits"...
I am reminded of a protestant pastor in Jacksonville who showed me a picture that his son had taken in Haiti (this would have been 20+ years ago) in which there was a beast of some sort amongst the people...he claimed it was a demon--it was strange looking, whatever it was...
From Telegraph | News | Voodoo spirits get credit for Aristide's flight:
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide did not flee Haiti because he lost his nerve. Neither did the United States blackmail him. No, the most satisfying explanation for the country's recent upheavals is that the spirits were offended and taking their revenge.
Voodoo, an exotic synthesis of African, Caribbean and Roman Catholic beliefs, with freemasonry mixed in too, pervades every facet of life in Haiti, so its role in the downfall of Mr Aristide is, for most, beyond dispute.
Just as its flags, murals, shrines, rum, rattles and images of madonnas and saints lurk, invisible from the outside, in slum temples, the religion underlies each momentous event in the nation's history.
The rise and fall of Mr Aristide, its first democratically elected leader and an ordained Catholic priest who adopted as his symbol the cockerel, a voodoo icon, illustrates this. Mr Aristide, whose library contained many books on the national religion, was guilty of the voodoo equivalent of hubris and then struck down by its version of nemesis, several voodo priests said this week.
Comparing himself to the heroes who won Haiti's slaves freedom from the French two centuries ago was a fatal mistake, they said, one that the heroes, by now spirits themselves, punished.
I am reminded of a protestant pastor in Jacksonville who showed me a picture that his son had taken in Haiti (this would have been 20+ years ago) in which there was a beast of some sort amongst the people...he claimed it was a demon--it was strange looking, whatever it was...
From Telegraph | News | Voodoo spirits get credit for Aristide's flight:
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide did not flee Haiti because he lost his nerve. Neither did the United States blackmail him. No, the most satisfying explanation for the country's recent upheavals is that the spirits were offended and taking their revenge.
Voodoo, an exotic synthesis of African, Caribbean and Roman Catholic beliefs, with freemasonry mixed in too, pervades every facet of life in Haiti, so its role in the downfall of Mr Aristide is, for most, beyond dispute.
Just as its flags, murals, shrines, rum, rattles and images of madonnas and saints lurk, invisible from the outside, in slum temples, the religion underlies each momentous event in the nation's history.
The rise and fall of Mr Aristide, its first democratically elected leader and an ordained Catholic priest who adopted as his symbol the cockerel, a voodoo icon, illustrates this. Mr Aristide, whose library contained many books on the national religion, was guilty of the voodoo equivalent of hubris and then struck down by its version of nemesis, several voodo priests said this week.
Comparing himself to the heroes who won Haiti's slaves freedom from the French two centuries ago was a fatal mistake, they said, one that the heroes, by now spirits themselves, punished.
Think The Passion of the Christ was Violent?
On Saturday two Christian men were axed to death in Egypt...
From Yahoo! News - Egypt Deploys 1,000 Police After Christians Killed:
Egyptian authorities deployed some 1,000 police around a southern town on Saturday to forestall any Muslim-Christian clashes after two Christian men were killed in a street brawl, security sources said.
The Christians were axed to death after a donkey being ridden by a Muslim man slipped on the wet roadway outside their house in the town of Salamoun, about 350 km (220 miles) south of Cairo, they said.
The donkey rider was later arrested and questioned. Witnesses in the town said there had been no further violence but the situation was tense.
Salamoun, a Nile valley town of about 40,000 people, is close to 40 percent Coptic Christian but was also a stronghold of militant Islamists who fought the government in the 1990s. "
From Yahoo! News - Egypt Deploys 1,000 Police After Christians Killed:
Egyptian authorities deployed some 1,000 police around a southern town on Saturday to forestall any Muslim-Christian clashes after two Christian men were killed in a street brawl, security sources said.
The Christians were axed to death after a donkey being ridden by a Muslim man slipped on the wet roadway outside their house in the town of Salamoun, about 350 km (220 miles) south of Cairo, they said.
The donkey rider was later arrested and questioned. Witnesses in the town said there had been no further violence but the situation was tense.
Salamoun, a Nile valley town of about 40,000 people, is close to 40 percent Coptic Christian but was also a stronghold of militant Islamists who fought the government in the 1990s. "
The Passion--$212,034,000
They say the second weekend is the real test for whether a movie is good or not. Well, The Passion of the Christ has passed that test...
From Box Office Mojo > Box Office By Movie: "Total as of Mar. 7, 2004: $212,034,000 (Estimate)"
It's been the #1 movie, everyday since its release.
From Box Office Mojo > Box Office By Movie: "Total as of Mar. 7, 2004: $212,034,000 (Estimate)"
It's been the #1 movie, everyday since its release.
Sunday, March 7, 2004
Cross Meditations
Jesus said if anyone wanted to follow him, they should take up their cross and get behind him...currently you have two movements going on:
The presentation of the horrid suffering of the Cross
and...
The denial that there is any cross in life.
I continue to post a daily look at how the cross of Christ is a beacon to the way we approach our lives, click on the gate to the right to view today's entry.
The presentation of the horrid suffering of the Cross
and...
The denial that there is any cross in life.
I continue to post a daily look at how the cross of Christ is a beacon to the way we approach our lives, click on the gate to the right to view today's entry.
If Britany Can--Why Can't He?
There are reports out there that the current rush of same sex marriages is part of a campaign to legitimize same sex relationships in the minds of the "average" person. One comment that I've seen quoted over and over, two examples come to mind--one being below, the other in "My Turn" in the current issues of Newsweek, is the comment that relates to the cheapened way marriage was treated by Brittany Spears (this makes me suspicious if even that isn't a part of this overall scheme).
Now, Episcopal Bishop Eugene Robinson who is the "pope" of this whole movement and is at the forefront of moving this agenda into the public eye wants to be married--and you know what? The same Episcopal bishops who elected him a bishop ought to do the ceremony and then declare themselves followers of bishop Robinson and publicly declare that they are followers of the Son of Robin rather than the Son of God...
From Breakingnews.ie:
Robinson, whose election as the US church?s first openly gay bishop last year had divided Anglicans throughout the world, said yesterday ? , two days before he was due to become the Episcopal Church?s leader in New Hampshire ? that the gay marriage issue was one of civil rights.
?It is very irritating to me that Britney Spears, when she traipsed off to be married in Las Vegas, instantly had what my partner and I of 15 years do not have,? he said.
Robinson takes over tomorrow from retiring Bishop Douglas Theuner at a time when the debate over gay rights, including marriage, is making headlines nationwide.
Now, Episcopal Bishop Eugene Robinson who is the "pope" of this whole movement and is at the forefront of moving this agenda into the public eye wants to be married--and you know what? The same Episcopal bishops who elected him a bishop ought to do the ceremony and then declare themselves followers of bishop Robinson and publicly declare that they are followers of the Son of Robin rather than the Son of God...
From Breakingnews.ie:
Robinson, whose election as the US church?s first openly gay bishop last year had divided Anglicans throughout the world, said yesterday ? , two days before he was due to become the Episcopal Church?s leader in New Hampshire ? that the gay marriage issue was one of civil rights.
?It is very irritating to me that Britney Spears, when she traipsed off to be married in Las Vegas, instantly had what my partner and I of 15 years do not have,? he said.
Robinson takes over tomorrow from retiring Bishop Douglas Theuner at a time when the debate over gay rights, including marriage, is making headlines nationwide.
Saturday, March 6, 2004
Mel Gibson's Triumph
From Mel Gibson's Triumph:
"On coming away from a first, full viewing of Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ,' among the questions that came to mind was: What in heaven's name was all the howling about?
For the all-powerful impression this emotionally draining film leaves one with is that this is what the Son of God went through for our sins and our salvation. Those who called 'The Passion' anti-Semitic without seeing it, who tried to censor it and keep it out of theaters, and who trashed it as pornographic as soon as it appeared on Ash Wednesday have made perfect fools of themselves.
For Catholics, this first week of Lent was a decidedly mixed one. The magnitude of the scandal of pedophile and pervert-priests, now fully documented, testifies that Pope Paul VI was right when he warned, post Vatican II, that the smoke of Hell had entered the vestibule of the Church.
But Gibson's 'Passion' gives us a Lenten masterpiece, a beautiful moving work of art. To cradle Catholics who can recite the lines of each episode before they are uttered, it is faithful to the Gospels, to the Stations of the Cross, to the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.
But what you come out of this film with depends on what you took in. If you are looking for evidence of Jewish villainy, you can find it in Caiphas, the sinister high priest of the Sanhedrin who was the driving force in the mob's demand for the crucifixion and death of Jesus. And in the pathetic figure of Judas the betrayer. But almost all the heroines and heroes are also Jews.
For this is, after all, a Jewish and Roman story, though Caiphas appears as a cartoon villain alongside Pilate, the more interesting figure. For Pilate is gripped by a moral dilemma, and takes the weakling's way out, ordering Christ crucified --though he believes Christ to be innocent"
"On coming away from a first, full viewing of Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ,' among the questions that came to mind was: What in heaven's name was all the howling about?
For the all-powerful impression this emotionally draining film leaves one with is that this is what the Son of God went through for our sins and our salvation. Those who called 'The Passion' anti-Semitic without seeing it, who tried to censor it and keep it out of theaters, and who trashed it as pornographic as soon as it appeared on Ash Wednesday have made perfect fools of themselves.
For Catholics, this first week of Lent was a decidedly mixed one. The magnitude of the scandal of pedophile and pervert-priests, now fully documented, testifies that Pope Paul VI was right when he warned, post Vatican II, that the smoke of Hell had entered the vestibule of the Church.
But Gibson's 'Passion' gives us a Lenten masterpiece, a beautiful moving work of art. To cradle Catholics who can recite the lines of each episode before they are uttered, it is faithful to the Gospels, to the Stations of the Cross, to the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.
But what you come out of this film with depends on what you took in. If you are looking for evidence of Jewish villainy, you can find it in Caiphas, the sinister high priest of the Sanhedrin who was the driving force in the mob's demand for the crucifixion and death of Jesus. And in the pathetic figure of Judas the betrayer. But almost all the heroines and heroes are also Jews.
For this is, after all, a Jewish and Roman story, though Caiphas appears as a cartoon villain alongside Pilate, the more interesting figure. For Pilate is gripped by a moral dilemma, and takes the weakling's way out, ordering Christ crucified --though he believes Christ to be innocent"
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