Sometimes I think Facebook can be such a waste of time, and often times it is. However, I recently discovered that there is one useful aspect of Facebook: birthdays! People write on your wall all day, and if you’ve got your cell phone to chime everytime someone writes on your wall, you’ve got a phone that just rings all day, it’s unreal… and fun! It’s always nice when people remember you.
Thanks to everyone for the birthday greets!
I just saw Seinfeld episode #140 “The Fatigues” where Elaine promotes the mail sorter to an executive position, and Kramer gets Frank Costanza to cook for a Jewish singles night. What was really interesting, and ironic, about the show was the scene at the Jewish singles night. If one looked carefully at what was adorning the walls of that scene, one would have noticed:
Those three items above are blatantly clear references to Catholicism, but at a Jewish event? Either the set decorators didn’t do enough research, or else they simply wanted to have a little fun! Clever.
Afterthought: I just realized part of the plot was Kramer choosing to have the Jewish singles night at Frank’s Knights of Columbus hall. Oh well, if one didn’t know that, the irony of the whole thing is still quite interesting!
From the National Post
22 March 2008
by Ian Hunter
Easter Sunday is the holiest day in the Christian calendar, representing the triumph of hope over despair, of life over death.
As it happens, two recent and unrelated events have called public attention to hope, hope being one of the three theological virtues — faith and love the other two.
First, U. S. Senator Barack Obama has made hope a central theme (along with “change”) of his campaign for the presidential nomination.
Second, Pope Benedict XVI made hope the subject of his most recent encyclical (Spe Salvi), released just before Christmas.I think it is safe to predict that the Pope’s encyclical will be pondered long after Barack Obama’s campaign.
The Pope begins by reminding readers that the greatest Christian evangelist, St. Paul, told the Romans “you are saved by hope” (Romans 8:24). Hope is a gift from God, says the Pope, a trustworthy gift, a gift that enables men and women to survive in arduous, uncertain times.
Hope is a key word in Scripture — in fact, in scripture it is often used interchangeably with faith. So to have hope, or to have faith, is to have received a divine gift. St. Paul told the church at Ephesus that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope,” or, as Pope Benedict expresses it “in a dark world facing a dark future.” But the light of Christ illuminates the darkness and assures that they have a future. Oh, true, much of that future remains hidden; “it is not that [Christians] know the details of what awaits them,” the Pope writes, “but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness.”
To come to know God, says Pope Benedict, is to encounter hope. The earliest Christians — for the most part poor people, uneducated and oppressed — had nothing to hope for, apart from the resurrection of Jesus. What they had was the assurance, often received directly from the apostles who had been there and seen it, that the tomb that once contained the body of Jesus was empty. That was Christian hope, and armed with that hope this ragtag brigade turned the world upside down with a crazy allegiance to another King, an upside-down King, this Jesus, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.
So for the early Christians hope was not a “not yet” kind of hope, rather an “already happened” hope. The Pope explains how the Catholic understanding of hope provides “even now something of the reality that we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a ‘proof’ of things that are still not seen.”
What is the “present reality” of Christian hope?
Well, God’s Church — universal, apostolic, tracing its origin to Christ’s own words and to its first Primate, Peter. And the Eucharist, by which we come to share in Christ’s body and blood. And the peace of Christ, not that peace which the politician on the campaign trail purports to offer, but rather a peace that passes understanding.
In the section of the encyclical entitled “The True Shape of Christian Hope,” Pope Benedict draws a distinction between the material and the ethical realms of life. In the material realm, he says, we observe “continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature.” But no comparable mastery can occur in the ethical realm because “man’s freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew.” Therefore, “the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed”; man’s earthy hopes, and his freedoms, always remain fragile and conditional.
Senator Barack Obama holds out the prospect of hope to an American electorate that is cynical about politicians, dispirited by current prospects, and uncertain about the future. Pope Benedict, by contrast, offers a hope that Christians for two millennia have tested in their daily lives, however perilous or oppressive their personal circumstances might be.
The essence of Christian hope was best summed up in a few words when Jesus said: “In this world, you will have tribulation. Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
Catholic Christians have double cause for rejoicing: in hope, and in having in Pope Benedict someone who can express that hope with such conviction, eloquence, and humility.
— Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at Western University.
Driving home today, I passed by a young man waiting at a bus stop holding out his cell phone camera… which was aimed at a young woman walking away from him. Caught in the act!
I thought that was funny.
Recorded live at the annual Public Way of the Cross in Winnipeg, Canada, experience the sounds of this wonderfully emotional event! This was my first ever field recording with the Zoom H2, so you’ll have to forgive me for the clipping (ie. sound distortion) here and there.
I even ran into some SQPN listeners today!
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Back after three weeks of exams!; motivation: what makes us tick?; how to pull an all nighter, and are they good for you?; Fr. Roderick of SQPN.com explains the “new” seven deadly sins; my own upbeat Bo Diddley mix!
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I’ve got a classmate that likes to remind me from time to time of our mortality with the classic phrase, “we’re all gonna die anyway”. He seems more likely to say that if we’re trying to accomplish a task that seems difficult and somewhat redundant. For example, if we have to try to learn something that seems so trivial and pointless, he might say something like “I don’t get why we have to learn this, we’re all gonna die anyway”.
In a sense, he’s absolutely right. We’re all going to die at some point, and if that’s the case, then what’s the point in living? What’s the point in trying to do things that seem so unimportant in the midst of the ultimately reality of inescapable death? This questioning can be taken further: why is there something rather than nothing?
Here’s what I think: the meaning of life is to live a meaningful life, in order to justify the glory of God. We are each obligated to use the unique gifts we were each given for the greater good of humankind, thus manifesting the love of God. Now, evolutionary psychologists may answer the meaning of life question by saying that we exist in order to propagate the species; in other words, to procreate and populate the planet so that humankind can live on. And I agree with that because I think that the life meaning question can be answered in different ways. If these two responses to the life question seem incompatible, as one is from a faith perspective and the other is from a science perspective, they actually are not. They are quite compatible with each other. How?
Life meaning #1: Live to justify and share the love of God.
What is the plan of God for man?
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In the fullness of time, God the Father sent his Son as the Redeemer and Savior of mankind, fallen into sin, thus calling all into his Church and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, making them adopted children and heirs of his eternal happiness.
Life meaning #2: Live to propagate the species.
What is the plan of God regarding man and woman?
God who is love and who created man and woman for love has called them to love. By creating man and woman he called them to an intimate communion of life and of love in marriage: “So that they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matthew 19:6). God said to them in blessing “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
So there you have it. Both of those quotes are taken directly from teachings of the Catholic Church, where faith and science can truly co-exist. (If that previous statement on faith on science co-existing has irked your interest on the whole evolution vs. creation debate, then you might find it interesting to know that both theories are entirely acceptable and compatible. How? Find out here, and scroll down to my August 5, 2007 entry. Enjoy!)
You are currently browsing the Master of Ceremonies blog archives for March, 2008.
 | globaltravelerisme on Anthony de Mello, SJ |
 | Rick D. on MC Episode #9 |
 | Halem on I can see the light! |
 | Life on caught in the act! |
 | Louise Lewis on the meaning of life |
