Ahead of Christmas, I heard a lot of ads for a company that digitizes old photos and videos. The pitch was that all of our physical recordings can be lost or destroyed, but a digital version is a gift of security for a loved one’s memories.
Every year, OFB’s Tim Butler assembles a Twelve Days of Christmas booklet to help anyone interested in meditating on the miracle of Christmas over that season between December 25 and Epiphany. This year’s booklet is the Kings Before, looking at Old Testament kings and what they do to help us understand who Jesus is. The first day’s reading appears on this page exclusively ahead of the full release on Christmas night.
Does joy end when the clock strikes midnight, closing out Christmas Day? Tim Butler’s new twelve days of Christmas devotional booklet the Joys of Christmas, which is our Christmas gift to you, invites us to embark on a journey to “store up” Christmas joy well beyond December 25. Following the Medieval meditative list known as the Joys of Mary, often encountered through the carol of the same name, we will explore a total of thirteen “joys” that all of us can experience from the life of Jesus.
Society, even that of what once was Christendom, is not Christian. Exhibit A: the Olympics’ opening ceremony’s now infamous scene mashing up Greek mythology, Christian iconography and drag queens. If Christendom is now Inclusivedom, though, could Christians at least get a serving of the inclusivity pledged in this society’s creed?
I could have written this column, regardless of the outcome. Half the country has put its hopes in an all too human “savior.” Half the country has put its hopes on the defeat of that man. Today marks either a celebration or a catastrophe if one’s hopes rest on the state of President Trump. That tells more of our false hopes than anything else.
You’re probably not a “big-C” Catholic. Most people aren’t. Some of us increasingly doubt that the pope himself is. We can’t tell, because he spends most of his public time being a fascio-leftist politician.
Easter is a week and a half away, and it seems a good time to bring up something I’ve pondered for decades, on which Roman Catholicism gave me a unique view.
Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day collide this year. The combination feels bizarre: a day associated with fancy meals and rich desserts has been forced to share a table with one that focuses on our failures. Yet a common thread weaves between: love.
Opening up X this week, I noted that the present beverage brewing tempests were the Internet meltdown over Taylor Swift’s new love interest and the honoring of an alleged Nazi in the Canadian parliament during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit. The invisible thread binding them was the Culture Warriors claiming to fight for Jesus who made these the cause célèbre.
We often say, “I love Jesus.” But how often do you hear, how often do you say, “I like Jesus”?