Only say the word and I shall be healed.

02-04-2024Weekly Reflection© LPi Fr. John Muir

Maybe I’m weird, but I like spending time in doctor’s offices, confession lines in churches, auto repair shops, prison cells, and support groups of various kinds. It’s refreshing to be with people who humbly admit something is wrong and forthrightly set out on a path toward a solution. When we ignore what is off kilter, we become alone and fragile. In places where people are honest and hopeful about brokenness, sturdy if subtle fellowship usually ensues.

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Jesus, Restore Us

01-28-2024Weekly Reflection© LPi Fr. John Muir

I love movies about exorcisms. Apparently, so do many others. The 2023 movie Nefarious features a possibly possessed inmate on death row. Critics were not impressed, but audiences scored it at 97% on the website Rotten Tomatoes. Most people have an appreciation for the demonic realm, even if cultural elites are generally embarrassed about it. As is standard in exorcism movies, the afflicted person (in this case, a man named Edward Brady) thinks and acts like multiple persons. He is someone besides himself. We know what that is like. We feel fake sometimes, not ourselves.

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Repent!

01-21-2024Weekly Reflection© LPi Fr. John Muir

We start telling lies around the age of three, the experts tell us. It’s understandable. Lying is a god-like power. Whatever I want, I need only say it, and the world rearranges itself accordingly. It’s amazing at first. But soon reality snaps back and I’m faced with a dilemma. If I remain committed to my lie I start to fracture into pieces. My words and reality drift apart, and I find myself lost in a lonely world of further falsehoods and fear of being found out.

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Those Who Seek the Truth

01-14-2024Weekly Reflection© LPi Colleen Jurkiewicz Dorman

In my work as a freelance writer, I have a regular column in the archdiocesan paper writing profiles of ordinary people in the local church. Laity, religious, and clergy alike — I hound them all to give me an interview, and when I do, the answer is almost always this: “You don’t want to talk to me. There’s nothing special about me.”

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Step Into the Light

01-07-2024Weekly Reflection

How strange it is to think that if not for Herod’s directions, the magi would not have known where to find Jesus. They were not Jews, they knew nothing of the old prophecies. It was Herod who convened the scholars. It was Herod who pointed the way — for ulterior motives, certainly, but nonetheless, this is the part he played. It was Herod who made the Epiphany possible.

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Catholic New Year’s Resolutions

12-31-2023Weekly Reflection

Increase your Marian Devotion.
Make more time for spiritual reading.
Make good stewardship a lifestyle.
Share your Catholic faith with others.
Bring back regular penances.
Go an extra day to Mass during the week.
Pray the rosary more often.
Pick a new Saint buddy. (Why not take on the tradition of choosing a different Catholic saint as a special patron each year?)

Merry Christmas

12-24-2023Weekly Reflection

More than nineteen hundred years ago, a decree went forth from the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, commanding a general census in which all the people of the empire should be enrolled, “each in his own city,” that is, in the place to which his tribe and family belonged.

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Bear Witness to the Light

12-17-2023Weekly Reflection© LPi Fr. John Muir

Why do we believe in Jesus and the Catholic Church? Why should we continue to do so? We’ve never seen him face-to-face (at least not most of us, I assume). Most of us have never had mystical visions of angels or saints. We live in the same world as our atheist and secularists friends. Why do we believe in Christ if we’ve never seen him?

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December 12 - the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

12-10-2023Weekly Reflection

The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, near Mexico City, is one of the most celebrated places of pilgrimage in North America. On Dec. 9, 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian convert, Juan Diego, and left with him a picture of herself impressed upon his cloak.

Later, the picture was placed in a magnificent shrine which the Roman Pontiffs ennobled by granting it a Chapter of Canons for the splendor of Divine Worship. There it became famous for the concourse of people and the frequency of miracles, exciting immeasurably the piety of the Mexican nation toward the Mother of God.

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1st Sunday of Advent: Life Is an “Advent-sure”

12-03-2023Weekly Reflection

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. Psalm 130:5

Life is an “Advent-sure” because we know how it all turns out! It is the coming of our Lord to be with us, in us and among us. His coming is a “given.” Christ’s presence in and through us is always a sure thing. Advent assures us again and again, whether we look like it, feel like it or even act like it, that Christ is the one who gifts us with the Advent-sure of a lifetime!

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