Melanie Rigney's Blog, page 113

What Are You Doing for Lent?

“What are you doing for Lent?” It’s the most popular topic going these days among my Catholic and non-Catholic friends. Or at least, the most popular topic after when is this crazy winter ever going to end. And maybe, at some level, they’re related.

Pope Francis, no slouch when it comes to challenging the faithful, has urged us to consider St. Paul’s call to live “a life of evangelical poverty.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reminds us of the three pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting, a...

On the Nightstand: March

“I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.”

That humble statement is on the back cover of Flannery O’Connor’sA Prayer Journal, published last year. In case you’re not familiar with this Catholic, Flannery O’Connor was a gifted short-story writer and essayist who was just thirty-nine when she died in 1964.

This thin volume will be my reading this Lent, and I’m itching for Wednesday so I can get started!

What’s on your nightstand?

Being Christ in Our Lives: Janet Spurr

This has been one long, cold winter for most of us, physically and perhaps spiritually as well. And yet, my friend Janet Spurr is always about the beach and joy.

When Imet Spurr, she had just arrived in Maui after a 30 or so hour travel odyssey from her home in Massachusetts. Instead of complaining and whining, she was cracking jokes.

I learn from Spurr’s passion and her total presence in the moment, whether she’s promoting her book,Beach Chair Diaries;walking on the beach; working her day job;...

“Who Am I to Judge?”

Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

“Who am I to judge?”

Five words that shook the world last July. It’s what Pope Francis said about gay people in response to a reporter’s question about a “gay lobby” in the Vatican.

“Do not judge so that you may not be judged.”

Ten words that likely shook the crowd when Jesus spoke them, words that so resonated that the missive is restated in James 5 in today’s first...

Of Faith and Works… and Mission

Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

Today’s lectionary readings include this from James 2:

See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

Ah, the old faith vs. works debate. You know the basics: Protestants say we’re saved by faith alone. Catholics say we show our faith by our works. I’m no theologian, b...

Just the Two of Us

Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

It’s surely happened to you. You mispronounce or misuse a word while you’re with a group of people. Or maybe everyone knows you’re trying to lose weight, and you go ahead and order that mudpie for dessert. Then, someone feels the need to “helpfully” point out that one doesn’t pronounce the T in “often” or the calories in that dessert pretty much account for the to...

Like a Little Prayer

“Every chance to write is a prayer,” my fellow Your Daily Tripod contributor Father Joe McCloskey, S.J., wrote to a group of us in an e-mail last week. That’s the thing about Father Joe; I don’t know if it’s his fifty years as a priest or his time with Gonzaga High School in DC or his God-given charism, but he has a knack for tossing out these one-liners that really make you pause and think.

When it comes to formal writing, you can be assured I understand the power of my words. I pray before a...

The Rights of Royalty

Note: On Fridays, you can find me atYour Daily Tripod,owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

David loved God. There can be no question of that. He messed up, royally messed up, on more than one occasion. Yet his love was lived out on an equally large scale: in his confidence the Lord would protect him in the face-off against Goliath, in the beautiful psalms that he wrote for the Father, in the delivery of the Ark of the Covenant. We learn in Sirach 47 that...

Of Tongues and Lips

A potentially good thing happened to me this morning, actually a potentially great thing. It has to do with a longtime rift with someone I love very much, andan indication the ice may be thawing.

The situation has been the subject of many prayers, mine and those of some friends. It seemed appropriate to offer up thanks in a house of worship, so I made the four-block or so trek from the day job to St. Vincent de Paul Church’s 12:10 p.m. Massdespite the rain and general misery outside.

St. Vincen...

In the Dark

It was dark. Darker than anywhere I’d ever slept before. Quiet too.

A friend and I were spending a weekend in beautiful Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, a scenic, arty little community of about 600 residents in the Appalachians. My friend scored us a roomy two-bedroom unit that faced the town square, just around the corner from U.S. Highway 522, the main drag through town.

It didn’t occur to me until it was bedtime that my room didn’t have a single window. The door fit so snugly that no light c...