Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 6

Bethany (for Monday of Holy Week), by Friar David Hirt

You came into our life on feet like dusty heartbeats, beating bare, your human heart out-pouring love and life for one whom even death itself could not keep back from you. And I have nothing worth your gift; incomp’rable, to place into your hands but my most costly thing; a poor excuse compared with All. […]

The Strange Story of Brooke Greenberg

When she died in 2013 at the age of 20, she was what she had been for the previous 18 years: a toddler in mind and body.  And nobody really knows why.  Say a prayer for her little soul.  May she know eternal rest in the arms of the God of Abraham:

Fasting Friday: Thinking about Hell

Lent is a good time for facing hard things and Fasting Fridays seem to me to be especially good days for that. When Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray, he spent his time there facing the realities of sin, hell, and death, not twirling buttercups. He did so for the same reason […]

Fasting Friday: Thinking about Hell

Lent is a good time for facing hard things and Fasting Fridays seem to me to be especially good days for that. When Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray, he spent his time there facing the realities of sin, hell, and death, not twirling buttercups. He did so for the same reason […]

Prayer Wednesday: Wonder and Prayer

The common mother of art, philosophy, science, and religion is Wonder. The world pours out torrents of wonders upon us and it is the most human thing in the world to ask, “Why?”  In antiquity, nobody had set up walls between these four different ways of exploring the wonders of the world.  Consequently, Solomon could […]

Almsgiving Monday: Three Ways to Give

I’m a huge fan of Mercy for Life, a delightful little apostolate in Uganda run by my friends Fausta Nalubega and her husband Ross Earl Hoffman.  It’s a beautiful little Catholic community that takes care of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the sick, the unborn, and the elderly.  They praise God, run a school, […]

Something to Completely Blow Your Mind for a Saturday

Do you know what John Wayne’s last film was? Wrong! It was Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope: John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979) was an American actor. He provided the voice of Imperial spy Garindan in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope via stock audio, making this his last […]

Fasting Friday: George Soros and the Revival of Antisemitic Tropes

John Zmirak recently delivered himself of this ipse dixit to any potential convert to the faith who does not meet his stringent criteria for Truly True Catholicism: Note the “ethnic” part of that, for thereby hangs a tale. When the Cult says “George Soros” they mean “International Jewish Banker”. He is the Authoritarian Right’s (and […]

Prayer Wednesday: Joseph Pearce on the Annunciation and the Downfall of Barad-dur

Joseph Pearce reflects on Tolkien’s destruction of the One Ring on March 25, which one important tradition identified both as the date of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary and as the date of the Crucifixion.  Indeed, as I have noted in Mary, Mother of the Son, the data we actually have points, not […]

Almsgiving Monday: Who Killed the Knapp Family?

A reader sends along this piece from the Grey Lady, remarking: This is horrifying. A long but necessary read. The United States descends toward Third World status because of unchecked capitalism and really bad policy choices; and we can’t/won’t do anything about because people cry “SOCIALISM!” “They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose father […]