Although Catholics are known for their obligatory holy days (such as All Saints’ Day or the Feast of the Assumption), some of the most significant events on the church calendar come with no obligation attached. Among these are the ones that come at the end of Holy Week known as the Triduum, a Latin term meaning “a space of three days.”

The biblical significance of three consecutive days is that of gestation and rebirth: Think Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish and how it changes his mind about his mission. The ancients viewed three as a perfect number: totality epitomized by the prime alliance of the Trinity. No wonder Saint Paul identifies a trinity of virtues—faith, hope, and love—as the essence of Christian living.

In the Easter Triduum we who put our hope in Christ celebrate our rebirth into eternal life. The Triduum is comprised of three commemorative events celebrated as a single act of liturgy continued over three days: the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening. In common usage, however, the Masses of Easter Sunday are included as an extension of the Triduum commemoration.

Throughout these high holy days we first recall the events of the Last Supper: the institution of the Eucharist as well as its obligation of discipleship, ritualized by the washing of feet. Enough Eucharistic bread is consecrated on Holy Thursday to last until the third day when we celebrate the Easter Vigil. The tabernacle is then emptied of its precious contents, reserved elsewhere with proper adoration. The Table of the Lord is also stripped bare.

At the Good Friday service the Passion of Jesus is recounted from the Gospel of John and the cross is venerated in a special way by the whole assembly: kissing, touching, bowing. The reserved Eucharist is distributed but no Mass is celebrated on the day we recall the Crucifixion.

After dark on the third day we light the fire of Easter and proclaim “Christ our Light” with a magnificent extended scriptural reading of the highlights of salvation history, culminating with the gospel account of the Resurrection. On this joyful night the church receives new members in the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and first Eucharist. During the Vigil we also welcome Christian candidates for full communion with the Catholic Church. The big word of the evening says it all: Alleluia!

Scripture
• Jonah 2; Matthew 26-28; Mark 14-16; Luke 22-24; John 13-20; 1 Corinthians 13:13

Online
• Three Holy Days: A Lenten Series on the Easter Triduum from Nativity Catholic Church, Longwood, Florida

Books
• What Every Catholic Needs to Know About Lent, Triduum, and Easter: A Parish Guide to the Paschal Season by Kevin McGloin (Resource Publications, 2001)
• These Sacred Days: Walking With Jesus through the Sacred Triduum by Brother Richard Contino, O.S.F. (St. Pauls, 2008)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

The simple answer to your question is: Yes, a person who is a member of a religious community or order can transfer to another community or order. Here are a few other considerations that arise with this question.

First, if the person happens to still be in first (or temporary) vows or is not yet vowed, she or he can leave freely because they are not yet full members of the community. Such leaving, however, is undertaken with much discernment, prayer, and conversation. The person must also faithfully tend to any responsibilities and relationships that have been established.

Second, the decision of a full member, someone who has professed final vows, to leave her or his community and, in some cases, join another community is a serious situation. This process is not engaged in lightly and is a time of great discernment, prayer, and conversation for both the individual and the community. After all, final vows means for life, not “for as long as I feel like it” or “’till something better comes along.” That being said, serious reasons do arise when a person can legitimately no longer live as a member of a particular community. These reasons are for the person and the leadership of the community to discern and are later witnessed by Rome for the valid dispensation from vows or transfer of vows.

Third, no religious community wants a person to feel “stuck” with them. On the contrary, religious communities want the very best for their members—to be free to love and serve God and God’s mission with other women or men who share the same vision. The community is built on real relationships and is not simply a structure within which one lives out one’s commitment for better or for worse. The pain of one member who feels “stuck” affects the whole of the community and must be tended to if the community and the individual are to be healthy and vibrant.

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

The Deadlies were chosen by committee, but we’ll get to that shortly. Pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust are more formally known as the “capital” sins. In Latin caput means “head”: These sins were deemed to be at the head of all other failures. Entertain these “source sins” and you were kaput.

Ancient Eastern monks launched the trend of vice lists. Becaue perfecting their spiritual lives was all they had to do, cataloguing what not to do was helpful. The 4th-century Egyptian monk Evagrius Ponticus defined eight bad attitudes that led to sin. Not long after, another monk, John Cassian, took the concept to the West, and his list resembles the one we now use—though he retained eight vices. In the 6th century Pope Gregory the Great decided a vice list would be useful outside monastic circles and he’s the one who dubbed them "capital" sins. But he still kept eight: “Vainglory” in his opinion being distinct from “pride.” Twelfth-century theologian Peter Lombard incorporated Pope Gregory’s list into his work. When Thomas Aquinas read Lombard in the 13th century, he decided to tidy up the tally and reduced it to the present seven.

Would this list ever have become more than a theologian’s ideal catalogue of errors if not for the Fourth Lateran Council? Possibly not. In 1215 this council mandated annual confession of mortal sins, putting forth the so-called “Easter duty” of confession followed by reception of communion once a year during the Easter season. Because life everlasting depended on it, anxious parishioners wanted guidance in making a worthy confession. They were directed to the Ten Commandments and the Seven “Deadly” (Mortal) Sins.

Artists took up the task of familiarizing the citizenry—many of whom were illiterate—with the list. Frescoes and canvases terrifyingly conveyed the ugliness of these vices and their just punishments. Chaucer incorporated the Deadly Sins in his Canterbury Tales and Dante defined the tiers of purgatory with them.

While his seven social may not come trippingly off the tongue, Pope Benedict XVI undertook a rewriting of the Deadly Sins for the modern world: environmental destruction, genetic manipulation, obscene wealth, creating poverty, drug trafficking, immoral use of science, and violations of fundamental human rights.

Scripture
• (Other vice lists): Exodus 20:1-17; Romans 1:29-31; Galatians 5:19-21; Colossians 3:5-10

Books
• The Capital Sins: Seven Obstacles to Life and Love Gerard P. Weber (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1997)
• “The Seven Deadly Sins” series from Oxford University Press

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Jean-Paul Sartre once claimed, “Hell is other people.” But he was a philosopher, not a theologian. He also didn’t know some of the heavenly people I do. Witty and notorious Oscar Wilde declared more objectively, “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” Shakespeare seemed to agree with him in The Tempest: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” Civil War General William T. Sherman was briefest: “War is hell,” while church father Saint John Chrysostom was perhaps the most provocative: “Hell is paved with priests’ skulls.”

So what’s the church’s official word on the subject? Hell is the "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1033). That underscores that hell is a deliberate choice; no one falls into it by accident. Hell is realized immediately upon death for those who die mortally (fatally) sinful. The irrevocability of this decision is a “call to responsibility” and “to conversion” (CCC no. 1035-36) for the living. No one is predestined for condemnation, and it’s not God’s intent that anyone should perish in this way (CCC no. 1037).

What impresses me is that more folks concern themselves with hellish details than seek to learn about heaven. If hell unnerves us, there’s an easy solution: Remain on the path of love. If hell is self-chosen alienation from God, then heaven is self-selected union. God is love, so stick with love and hell becomes literally a dead subject. Because God never rejects us but aims most passionately and personally at forgiving us, we alone can reject God and choose the suffering that is the fruit of sin and pavement of hell—priests’ skulls notwithstanding.

For this reason Jesuit Father John Sachs calls hell an “anti-creation”: not the world divinely engineered and ordained “good” from the start, made of the fabric of peace and plenty, but a realm of disorder, evil, anguish, and want. If we don’t care to live in God’s world, we’re free to fashion another epitomized by God’s absence as much as creation is charged with the grandeur of Sacred Presence.

Sachs cautions against imagining heaven and hell as equal-and-opposite attractions. The gospel presents hell as an ultimate possibility and heaven as an absolute reality. The apocalyptic language used to express these realms isn’t a snapshot of their literal aspects but a means of conveying the seriousness of what we, ultimately, do with our freedom.

Scripture
• Matthew 5:21-22, 29-30; 7:13-14; 10:28; 13:36-50; 25:31-46; Mark 9:42-48; Hebrews 9:27-28; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 John 3:14-16

Online
• “The Descent into Hell: Abandonment or a Victory over Death?” by Jerry Ryan, Commonweal, 4/11/97

Books
• 101 Questions and Answers on the Four Last Things by Joseph T. Kelley (Paulist Press, 2006)
• What Are They Saying About the Universal Salvific Will of God? by Josephine Lombardi (Paulist Press, 2008)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

The Franciscans have a long history in the church, beginning with the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) and Saint Clare of Assisi (d. 1253). Over the years many Franciscan religious communities have emerged within Catholicism and beyond. In addition many people have incorporated the spirit and values of Franciscan spirituality into their own ways of life. While there’s no way to cover all aspects of Franciscanism, we can make some general distinctions.

The main categories of Franciscans are the three orders:

The first is the Order of Friars Minor which is comprised of the Observants, the Conventuals, and the Capuchins. The Observants (O.F.M.) and the Conventuals (O.F.M. Conv.) were the Franciscans of Francis’s day and later to this day. The Observants were friars who typically lived in hermitages tucked into the mountains. Conventuals were friars who felt called to follow Francis by serving people in urban areas. These friars ministered and lived together in houses (or “convents”) among the people. The Capuchins (O.F.M. Cap.) were a reform of Franciscanism in the 16th century spearheaded by Friar Matteo da Bascio who felt called to go back to a more rigorous way of Franciscan life that he saw in Saint Francis.

The second order of Franciscans are the Poor Clare nuns, communities of contemplative women founded by or in the spirit of Saint Clare of Assisi along with her good friend Francis.

The third order of Franciscans is diverse, comprising religious Franciscans (Third Order Regular), who profess public vows and live in community, and lay Franciscans (Secular Franciscan Order), single and married men and women who live a Franciscan lifestyle in their own situations and lives.

Within the above orders, you will find even more diversity of customs and traditions unique to each individual Franciscan community.

So what’s a person to do if they are attracted to the Franciscan way of life? My best advice is to get out there and explore different communities, meet friars, sisters, or nuns, and allow yourself to envision your life with them. Can you see yourself in their shoes or sandals? I also encourage you to read and experience more of the lives of Francis and Clare and other Franciscan saints and holy people. In their stories you will find pieces of your own which will help you to discern and know which Franciscan community feels most at home to you.

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

When I celebrate, I don’t think of it as a sacrifice, and vice versa. Ancient religious sacrifices, however, were both: part obligatory expense (which God requires), part festival (we’re right with God again!). The use of the phrase the “holy sacrifice of the Mass” is rooted in this earlier understanding.

Biblically, Jewish shrine and temple worship could be a messy affair. Because the covenant with God involved blood (circumcision, Abraham’s nocturnal pact in Genesis 15, ritual offerings of animals), the word sacrifice was not misused. But when people gather together, it’s time to party, and the good news at these events far outweighed the bad for participants. Personal and communal sin was expiated: We’re back in the black on God’s books. What better reason to eat, drink, and be merry?

By the time of Jesus, however, late Judaism had already begun to steer away from the idea that ritual sacrifice alone, or even primarily, was what God wanted. Obedience and fidelity could be symbolized by the ritual moment but should not originate or end there. The “sacrifice of praise” was pleasing to God, as were hearts uplifted and whole lives rendered to God’s service.

We might see these developments as a maturing of the spiritual life; actually, they were quite practical for a community that had known migrations, captivity, exile, and oppression. Some generations had no access to the Temple. The best they could do was raise hands, hearts, and voices to God.

The gospels tell us Jesus saw his own looming fate as an act of obedience and giving glory to God. His blood would be poured out for the sins of many, and he was “lifted up” as an offering on the cross. When Saint Paul talks about the Eucharist, he doesn’t hesitate to use sacrificial language familiar to his Jewish audience. By the 3rd century the church fathers regularly promoted the activity of the Mass as a joint sacrifice of Christ and his body, the church.

Later Protestant reformers would reject sacrificial language applied to the Eucharist because it seemed to diminish the unique action of Jesus on the cross. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1562 took pains both to affirm that the Eucharist is the “unbloody” sacrifice of that same Jesus and to clarify that his self-offering is not repeated but “made present” in every Eucharist. What better reason to celebrate?

Scripture
• Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20; John 6:51; 1 Corinthians 5:7-8; 10:14-22; 11:23-26

Online
• Vatican Council II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, see Chapter 2: The Most Sacred Mystery of the Eucharist.
• Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de eucharistia encyclical letter 

Books
• A Holy and Living Sacrifice: The Eucharist in Christian Perspective by Ernest Falardeau (Liturgical Press, 1996)
• The Eucharist, Our Sanctification by Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap. (Liturgical Press, 1993)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Casually, they mean the same thing: the place from which readers read, cantors chant, and preachers preach. The original term for the whole thing was the Greek word ambo. When “church” evolved from being a name for the assembly to designate the special building where people gathered, architecture began to define the liturgical movements. Because the Mass comes in two parts, the Liturgy of the Word and of the Eucharist, the ambo was the place where the first part happened, and the altar was the stage for the second.

We see the vestige of the ambo design in the semicircular part of the sanctuary that juts into the assembly. The ambo pulpit was first positioned there on an elevated platform. Two staircases led to it. The subdeacon ascended from the east and, facing the altar, proclaimed the epistle. The deacon ascended from the west, facing the people, and proclaimed the gospel. Because both readings were chanted, this front area also housed the choir and was part of what today would be called the “music ministry.” Preaching was normally done from the presider’s chair.

The ambo design imitated the mountain where Moses received the Law and Jesus offered his famous Sermon. From the 4th-12th centuries this configuration was popular, leading to developments such as two ambos: an eastern one dedicated to the epistle and a western one with a permanent candle used for the gospel. Less common was the double-decker ambo with a lower station for the epistle and higher one for the gospel.

The pulpit eventually replaced the old ambo. Less ornate in decoration, it was still elevated (pulpit, by the way, means “scaffold”). The pulpit was separated from the choir and used purely for proclamation, its exalted stage viewed as the "position of the perfect.” Even during the early ambo period, acoustics were poor from the chair so some sermons were delivered from the ambo. The pulpit supported this tradition and is now usually the name for the place from which priests and deacons read the gospel and give the homily.

The lectern is a humbler development: It’s a support for a book. It may denote the stand the priest uses to prop up the sacramentary at the altar. Today, ambo and lectern are often used interchangeably to refer to the place where the readings, psalm responses, and general intercessions are proclaimed. The pulpit is generally reserved for preaching and the gospel reading.

Scripture
• 2 Chronicles 6:12-13; Nehemiah 8:3-5; Isaiah 40:9; Matthew 5:1-2

Online
• Built of Living Stones: Art, Architecture, and Worship, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Committee on Divine Worship

Books
• The House of God: Church Architecture, Style and History by Edward R. Norman (Norton/Thames and Hudson, 2005)
• Repitching the Tent: Reordering the Church Building for Worship and Mission by Richard Giles (Liturgical Press, 1999)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Among the saddest chapters of church history lies a story more about an era than an event, the consequences of which divided Western Christianity into Catholicism and Protestantism (Eastern Christianity had already split from the West in the Great Schism of the 14th century). Who started the Reformation is a matter of opinion: Was it Martin Luther, who in 1517 nailed to a church door 95 theses against the practice of indulgences (a practice which amounted to paying for your sins in cash rather than in penances)? Or was it centuries of papal scandals, corrupt priests, bloated church bureaucracy, and the extraordinary greed of religious leaders that preceded him?

In the 15th and 16th centuries, few doubted church reform was necessary. But the will to make changes ran up against the power of kings and clerics who profited from abusive practices like selling church offices and indulgences. While Luther’s criticism of the church was originally confined to these indefensible practices, in time he rejected more fundamental items: papal authority, the teaching on sacraments and salvation, the Catholic priesthood and monasticism (he had once been both a priest and a monk), veneration of saints, and clerical control of biblical interpretation.

Luther wasn’t the first reformer to denounce the moral decline of church leaders, but he was the first to view the problem as a theological one, hinging on false doctrine. He provided the ammunition to take aim not simply at church personnel but the credibility of the institution itself. Fellow Germans embraced Luther’s ideas and seized church property, expelling clergy and religious who didn’t join their cleansing movement.

Meanwhile, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin were evolving a competing reformation in Switzerland. While Lutherans wanted a reformed Eucharist and Baptism, the Calvinists wanted nothing to do with old sacramental forms. When a third “Radical Reformation” movement arose (Anabaptists, who later sired Baptists and Mennonites), both Catholics and Protestants saw them as heretics. The Church of England was founded in the same period but for reasons that were more political in nature.

The Reformation movement contained the fissures of its own future fault lines. When dissatisfaction with the church is resolved by leaving it, you legitimate every future departure as well. The chief goal of “reformation” is to modify, refashion, or reanimate your subject. Change would come to Catholicism in the long run—but without its separated sisters and brothers.

Scripture
• John 17:1-26; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Romans 12:3-8; 14:1-15:13; Ephesians 1:22-23; 4:11-16; Philippians 2:1-4

Online
• Texts about the Reformation and by Reformation figures

Books
• A History of the Christian Tradition, Vol. II: Reformation to the Present by Thomas C. McGonigle and James F. Quigley (Paulist Press, 1996)
• The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day by C. Colt Anderson (Paulist Press, 2007)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

A vocation to religious life also means having the gifts, disposition, and health necessary to carry out the mission of a particular religious community. In terms of health, a person must be in good overall health, though sometimes she or he may have an illness or disability that is manageable and does not impede their engagement with the mission of the community.

In some communities—in particular active religious communities (as distinct from cloistered or monastic ones)—there may be a greater emphasis placed on health because of the sometimes physically and/or emotionally challenging ministries in which the community may be involved. I encourage you to get to know a religious community—it’s mission, members, ministries, and way of life. You’ll get a sense of how at home you feel with them. Once you have begun relating to a vocation director, or if you have a mentor in the community, talk with them about your concerns. That doesn’t have to be the first thing you tell them about yourself, but you should raise you concerns early in your discernment with them.

I also encourage you to connect with persons who’ve been where you are and to check out resources for discerners like yourself. A resource right here on this website has information about religious communities that actively welcome persons with chronic illnesses.

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Discernment of spirits is as old as the church and as fresh as you and me, because anyone on the God-quest needs to know how to detect the divine fingerprint along the way. The question came up a lot in the early church: Saint Paul addresses it in letters to four different communities!

From Genesis forward the Bible contains stories of people confronting both good and evil spirits in many forms. Adam and Eve knew God and still bet wrong on the serpent. Abraham gambled more effectively when three strangers showed up at his tent. Jacob was never a God-centered chap and so had no clue what he was wrestling with that night he had his grip on an angel. Learning to tell good from evil isn’t enough, of course: King David knew better but chose poorly the night he laid eyes on Bathsheba.

Paul loves to talk about divine mysteries, but the discernment of spirits isn’t in that category for him. Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit, clearly identified by the fruits it produces, just as Jesus once said: “Each tree is known by its own fruit.” Paul spells out which fruits come from which baskets in Galatians 5. If you’re pursuing the idea of religious life, say, and the experience fills you with “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” Paul would call that a validated discernment. If on the other hand you wind up with a rotten bunch of fruit—immorality, idolatry, rivalry, jealousy, acts of selfishness, factions” and so on (it’s quite a list in Galatians 5!)—chances are the proposal is in error.

Paul’s also clear in 1 Corinthians 12 that discernment of spirits is a gift some enjoy as a specialty. It’s the “many parts, one body” idea: Not all are great at everything, which is why we must be church together. If you’re the Jacob-type wrestling with anonymous spirits in the dark, by all means seek spiritual direction from someone better at discerning spirits. Blessings on the journey!

Scripture
• Genesis 32:23-31; Romans 12:2-8; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; Galatians 5:16-26; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

Online
• Vocation Match: Fill out a short profile to find which of the more than 250 religious communities are compatible with you
• Biblical Catechesis on Vocations: Message of Pope John Paul II for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations (April 20, 1997)

Books
• The Discerning Heart: Exploring the Christian Path by Wilkie W. Au and Noreen Cannon Au (Paulist Press, 2006)
• Discernment: A Path to Spiritual Awakening by Rose Mary Dougherty (Paulist Press, 2009)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

For as many people who are called to religious life (sisters, nuns, monks, brothers) or to ordained life (priests, deacons) there are as many reasons why they are called to that particular way of life! Ask a religious brother or a contemplative nun or a married deacon and you’ll get a variety of responses as to why she or he chose that specific vocation. Often, however, you’ll hear common threads in their responses:

• A desire to give oneself wholeheartedly to God
• A passion for ministry and outreach
• A love of the Catholic faith
• A sense of the movement of the Holy Spirit
• A commitment to a prayerful way of life

In addition to these you’d find that each particular way of life has additional attractions—women and men in religious life are often drawn to community living as celibate persons; deacons and priests have a passion for serving within parish communities and dioceses; hermits desire solitude with God, and so on.

So there are many reasons (and sometimes it may even seem as if there’s not even a whole lot of reason!) why people become priests or hermits or sisters. But just like people who are called to marriage or single life or lay ministry, it all comes down to how the Spirit is moving in a person’s life and inviting them into a lifelong commitment to relationship with God and service to the world.

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

In the current political climate, every serious issue is a blood sport aimed at reelection. But it’s also true that Catholicism has now gone officially green. Pope Benedict XVI entitled his first address of 2010 If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation. That was a spin on Pope Paul VI’s signature phrase, “If you want peace, work for justice.” When you compare the two statements, you realize the pope has elevated stewardship of the planet to a work of justice!

That makes sense. Global warming, or climate change, or whatever you want to call it, has affected and will continue to harm the poor more than the rich; natural disasters and man-made ones generally do. While million-dollar homes are occasionally lost to floods and fires (think coastal California), the vast majority of the ones affected by the earth’s volatile forces are those who can’t easily restore what’s lost (witness Haiti, crushed first by an earthquake and then by cholera, or the Gulf Coast, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and then by a very preventable oil spill).

What the pope is saying is simple. If we treat creation as God’s gift and employ nature without greedily exploiting it, our stewardship will not only earn us our survival but also a global reality that’s sustainable in peace. If, however, we take what we can get from this planet and refuse to recognize the fragile ecosystem shared by soil, water, air, and life—including our own—then those on the short end of the benefit scale will rebel, and no one will have peace.

“The environment must be seen as God’s gift to all people, and the use we make of it entails a shared responsibility for all humanity, especially the poor and future generations,” the pope says. That widens our responsibility: not simply to our fellow inhabitants but to those who will inherit the earth from us. Will we offer them desertification, the pollution of rivers, the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and other perils the pope lists?

The threat to our world is not simply an ecological but a moral crisis, says the pope. If we disregard the growing number of “environmental refugees,” we will mostly certainly reap the impact of their instability and displacement. We embrace a future of conflict if we ignore “the human right to life, food, health, and development.” For these reasons green remains a year-round color for Catholics.

Scripture
• Genesis 1:28; 2:15; 3:17-19; Psalm 8:4-10; Proverbs 8:22-36; Isaiah 11:6-9; Romans 8:22-23; Colossians 1:15-17

Online
• If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation, message of Pope Benedict XVI for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2010

Books

• God, Grace, & Creation, edited by Philip J. Rossi (Orbis Books, 2009)
• Women Healing Earth, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether (Orbis Books, 1996)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

The words immaculate conception are not in the Bible, yet the teaching that Mary was conceived without sin carries the weight of dogma: a Greek term for “what seems right.” A dogma is considered an infallible teaching. According to the First Vatican Council (the "other" Vatican council rarely talked about), a dogma must be 1. Contained in scripture or part of post-biblical tradition; 2. Explicitly proposed as a divinely revealed belief; and 3. Issued as a solemn decree that can be later developed but not deliberately rejected without risk of heresy.

Wow. That means this teaching about Mary’s beginnings is essential to Catholic understanding. Yet none of the four gospels mentions Mary’s origins. Even her parents, Joachim and Anne, are not named. The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 trace Joseph’s line.

We get our early stories about Mary from that “post-biblical tradition” alluded to above, records of hazy origin like The Birth of Mary, the Protevangelion of James, and The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus. While these documents didn’t make the cut when the canon of scripture was set, they remain valuable windows into the way early Christians expressed their beliefs. One thing they make clear: The early church had a powerful sense that the Incarnation-event bound Jesus and his mother in a singular, physical infusion of divine grace.

That helps us appreciate why the Immaculate Conception—celebrated as a feast in the 11th century and officially introduced as dogma in 1854—still represents a very early church understanding. Theologians point to scripture passages that validate the cosmic preparation of Mary for her role: Genesis 3:15 (sin will be conquered by a woman); Luke 1:28 (Mary is favored); Luke 1:42 (Mary is blessed among women).

The 12th-century theologians Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux as well as Aquinas and Bonaventure in the 13th century voiced concern that a sinless Mary would put her outside of the need of Christ’s universal salvation. Do we really want to say she didn’t need saving? The Franciscan Duns Scotus resolved the objection by saying Christ could save in two ways: by lifting up the sinner or by preserving one from sin altogether. Mary remains the only person so far identified in the latter category.

Consider this: There was a time when your life and your mother’s were literally inseparable. For the sake of that time when Mary and Jesus shared life together in her body, why wouldn’t God prepare the way?

Scripture
• Genesis 3:15; Luke 1:28, 42

Online
• Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX’s Apostolic Constitution on the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1854
• The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), chapter 8, “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in the Mystery of Christ and the Church”

Books
• The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body edited by Donald H. Calloway, M.I.C. (Marian Press, 2005)
• Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament edited by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 2003)
• Tradition and Incarnation by William L. Portier (Paulist Press, 1994)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

The necessity for established, well-defined parish boundaries was identified at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) as a way to protect pastors and their communities from the harm that evolved from uncertain lines of authority and property. The original trouble was grounded in the feudal system: In earlier times the church was by no means separate from the state, as it is in most countries today. The notion of a parish with canonically (that is, by church law) protected rights and responsibilities serves to clarify what you and I “get”—and have a right to—when we join up.

Parish boundaries aren’t always geographically defined. Most are designated by territory, but they can also be defined by language, rite, ethnicity, or other elements that serve the community. For example, in large U.S. cities a French or Korean parish might serve all who speak those languages primarily. There’s also a military diocese that encompasses U.S. service folk wherever they may be, creating parishes anywhere armed forces personnel are serving. Rites in communion with Rome, like Maronites, Melkites, Ukrainians, and others, establish parishes defined less by geography than by the particular liturgy customary for those communities.

As a Catholic you may worship freely in any of these parishes or all of them if you wish. But there are advantages to registering with a particular parish—whether or not you live inside its technical boundaries—that are worth considering. A parish is defined by four basic elements.

First, it stands to serve a certain segment of the People of God. Second, it’s administered by a priest specifically charged with its sacramental care (even a parish with a nonordained administrator on-site reports to a member of the clergy who holds the official title of pastor). Third, a parish is governed by church law which outlines reciprocal rights and duties of pastor and parishioners. Finally, a parish is guaranteed a suitable site containing all that’s necessary for the Catholic spiritual life: Eucharistic equipment, baptismal font, confessional, cemetery, and a place for sacramental records to be kept. Those who register with a particular parish will have full access to all that’s necessary for Catholic identity when the time comes. Trust a former parish secretary here: Get on the books. It makes your sacramental life easier!

Scripture
• 1 Corinthians 1:10-17; 12:1-31; Ephesians 2:19-22; 4:1-7, 11-16

Online resources

• See nos. 26-27 of Pope John Paul II's 1988 Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici
• Parishes Online lets you find websites, Mass times, and directory information for any parish or diocese in the U.S.

Books
• Excellent Catholic Parishes: The Guide to Best Places and Practices by Paul Wilkes (Paulist Press, 2001)
• The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism by Richard P. McBrien (HarperOne, 2008)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

This is the post-Halloween question I was waiting for! It’s a good question, especially for those old enough to remember when the Trinity was defined as “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” First, the word ghost comes from the German Geist, which means “spirit.” So there is less difference between these terms than we normally ascribe. Our modern idea of ghosts, however, is so shaped by horror films and the occult that I can’t say simply: Yes, Catholicism admits the reality of ghosts. Let me take a longer route to the answer.

Catholicism teaches that we are both body and soul, or as Saint Paul says (using the Greek for these words), flesh and spirit. The soul is a “substantial and spiritual principle endowed with immortality” according to the Catholic Encyclopedia. It’s substantial because it has elements of being, such as potency, stability, and the capacity to be modified. It’s spiritual in that it is immaterial and has intelligence and free will—irrespective of its relationship to a physical body. When we die, the soul separates from the body, to be reunited “at the end of the ages.”

Jesuit John Hardon in his Modern Catholic Dictionary notes that God may and does permit the souls of the dead to appear before the living when it’s suitable for our salvation. The lives of the saints are full of such apparitions. Church teaching, based in biblical tradition, warns against trying to conjure or control such spirits as occult practices routinely do. That means just say no to Ouija boards, séances, mediums, automatic writing, tarot cards, or other supernatural methods for obtaining information.

Seeking the aid of powers other than God is a deterrent to faith, does not lead to good, and can lead to harm. That is the Catholic position on the supernatural in general. Note: It is not a refutation of the existence of supernatural things, angels, demons, and “ghosts” included. In fact, because exorcism is still on the books in Catholic teaching, it would confirm rather than deny the reality of the spiritual world.

But for heaven’s sake, none of this should make you scared! Catholics believe that God alone is sovereign, and there is no power or principality equal to divine authority—Satan included. Lost souls aren’t wandering around aimlessly or even purposefully to get you. All created things must answer to God, just like you and me. The Ghost you’re most likely to engage is a Holy one.

Scripture
• Deuteronomy 18:9-14; 1 Samuel 28:4-25; 2 Kings 21:6; Isaiah 3:1-3; Micah 5:11; Acts 7:51-53; 13:6-12; 16:16-24; 19:13-20

Online
• "I believe in life everlasting," Catechism of the Catholic Church

Books
• Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship by Diane Schoemperlen (Penguin Books, 2001)
• Apparitions of Modern Saints by Patricia Treece (Charis Books, 2001)

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“You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” The man we know as Augustine of Hippo, bishop and church doctor, made this passionate declaration to God in his Confessions written in Africa in the 4th century. A prolific writer and even more famous orator, it’s no wonder he’s the patron saint of printers today: He practically kept book-makers in business in his day. Despite the fact that he wrote and talked so much, and knew everyone worth knowing in the Mediterranean world from Saints Ambrose to Jerome, some things aren’t known about Augustine. The color of his skin is debated, for example. That he was an impassioned thinker and Christian convert, however, is unquestioned.

Augustine is significant for so many reasons it’s hard to condense them. He wrote some of the earliest extended scripture commentaries and shaped our understanding of the Book Genesis, at least, irrevocably. He left an indelible mark on teachings concerning baptism, original sin, chastity, and doctrines about Jesus as well. He chased suspicious ideas around the church tirelessly—the 4th century had the lion’s share of these—and defined orthodoxy on many issues. His preaching style still affects the modern practice of this art, and his ideas about liturgy remain captivating and fresh. One begins to wonder: Is there anything about Catholicism that Augustine didn’t influence?

While Augustine has been called the most important thinker in Western Christianity and remains the elephant in the room in any modern theological debate, a lot of folks don’t remember him for his ideas at all. Augustine fascinates as a person: He was arguably a sexually promiscuous young man who contracted a bad case of religion and couldn’t get rid of it. Sexual desire and intellectual craving for knowledge were the twin demons of his life. His restless heart found repose in the mystery of God reluctantly—but not without a considerable struggle which he chose to document personally for us. “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new!” he writes in his Confessions—sounding both rueful and relieved.

The man who would become Saint Augustine was once a faithless lover, an unreliable dad, a lousy prospect for a husband, and a guy who regularly broke his mother’s heart. That he also became an irreplaceable paving stone in church thought is wonderfully encouraging for all of us who currently fall short of who we might yet be.

Scripture
• Psalm 131; Jeremiah 20:7-9; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Online resources
• Augustine in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• University of Notre Dame Satellite Theological Education Program online course: The Confessions of St. Augustine

Books
• Confessions by Saint Augustine (Penguin Classics, 2006)
• Augustine of Hippo: A Biography by Peter Brown (University of California Press, 2000)
• Augustine of Hippo: A Life by Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

In most cases, yes, you can enter a religious order without a college degree. Many communities, however, will strongly encourage you to get a degree either before entering the community or while you are in formation.

There are a couple of significant reasons why religious communities often prefer persons entering to have a college degree. First, education and college life are significant experiences that expand the doorways of one’s mind and one’s life experience. We discover new ideas and ways of relating with other people, God, and the world around us. We also learn a lot about ourselves. All of that is key to being in a good space to make a life commitment in a religious community.

Second, a college education is essential to discovering and becoming skilled in our talents and gifts. As a religious you will use this training well in whatever you do in your ministry and community life. Your education can help you in a particular ministry (e.g., social work, medicine, education, pastoral care) and it can help you with community responsibilities (e.g., administration, facilitation, interpersonal relationships, and so on).

Religious communities also recognize that a college education is not always possible due to personal finances or life circumstances. There is often room to work things out, especially if a person entering has had other life experience such as a full-time job.

Get to know the religious community you hope to join and talk with their vocation director to see what the possibilities are.

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Sanctuary is a biblical tradition with a noble past; let’s hope the concept has a future. Rooted in the word sancta, it means "holy space." The original idea was to offer a place of asylum for people guilty of accidental homicide. Remember, ancient culture was governed by eye-for-an-eye justice and then some. When blood was shed in one family, it was expected the perpetrator’s family would soon be in mourning, too. Nomadic life was isolated and dangerous, and justice had to come swiftly to keep predators at bay.

When the Israelites stopped wandering and went urban, however, the new congested lifestyle made that sort of retribution problematic. Killing a fellow from the next tribe over was efficient when clans lived apart and moved on regularly. But you couldn’t kill your next-door neighbor’s son and not begin an escalating spiral of murders that would consume the town. Folks living in close proximity couldn’t abide that kind of communal conflict.

So six cities of asylum were established to correspond with up-and-running shrines in Israel. (This was before the time of the Temple in Jerusalem.) Now, if your ox gored a neighbor, you could run to the nearest shrine and stay there until the case could be heard and judged by the leadership. In this way, sanctuary provided a stopgap for instinctive violence until cooler heads prevailed.

In Catholic tradition, “the right of sanctuary is rooted in the reverence for places of worship and an abhorrence of any violation of sacred space,” writes theologian Richard McBrien in his Encyclopedia of Catholicism. That implies that our modern employment of sanctuary depends on an ancient understanding of sacred space. We have to believe there are places where God’s presence is uniquely manifest or honored. In congregations that view contemporary churches more as polite gathering rooms for the morally convinced, the sense of God-space the ancients had is lost. If a place isn’t “God-haunted” in a primal way, what’s to violate, and why not cross the line?

Catholicism maintains the notion of holy ground in churches, monasteries, retreat centers, even cemeteries. Once consecrated for sacred purposes, our holy places take on a character that sets them apart from the ordinary sphere of activity. For a church leader to offer sanctuary to an endangered community is to suggest there are still lines we can’t cross, places where God’s justice remains higher than our passion for legal solutions.

Scripture
• Numbers 35:9-15; Deuteronomy 19:1-13

Online
• A TIME magazine article on churches and the “new sanctuary movement”

Books
• This Ground Is Holy: Church Sanctuary and Central American Refugees by Ignatius Bau (Paulist Press, 1985)
• Journey of Dreams by Marge Pellegrino (Frances Lincoln Books, 2009)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Like all parts of creation, time can be harnessed for a sacramental purpose: to direct us to the holy. The Liturgy of the Hours is a ritual that engages the sacred character of time and helps us participate in the sanctification of each day to God’s purposes. Time is holy. We’re more mindful of that as we pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

Praying throughout the day has a long history in the church. The practice is rooted in the synagogue prayer which Jesus attended regularly. Jesus teaches his followers to pray and models frequent habits of prayer. In Acts the apostles gather for daily prayer with other believers. Saint Paul urges us to pray “unceasingly.” According to the early church theologian Tertullian, by the early 200s A.D. Christians were trying to do just that. They gathered for morning and evening prayer. They supplemented these communal moments with private prayer at rising and upon retiring and in between at the third, sixth, and ninth hours. They even interrupted their sleep to pray once during the night. These hours were identified with events in the life of Jesus. The midnight prayer, for instance, reminded them that Jesus would return one day “like a thief in the night.”

That was a tiresome schedule for most people with day jobs! Eventually two forms developed: monastic prayer and cathedral prayer. Monks and cloistered nuns might continue to keep the hours described above. Most Christians gathered for morning and evening prayer (matins and vespers) daily. Other hours were optional and private as time permitted. Yet even the people’s cathedral prayer became more formalized and gradually came to be viewed as the property of clergy. Lay folk abandoned it in favor of simpler prayer styles like the rosary.

The Second Vatican Council sought to reclaim this ancient and valuable prayer for the whole church. The council reaffirmed that clergy need not be present for the faithful to gather to celebrate the Hours. Simplified (and less expensive) versions of the Liturgy of the Hours in single-volume format have made this prayer style even more inviting. Personally I consider the years I’ve spent praying the Hours the most fruitful season of my life as a person of faith. This prayer reminds me that every day is a gift from God, every hour an opportunity for grace.

Scripture
• Matthew 5:44; 6:9-13; Luke 4:16; 6:28; 11:2-4; 18:1; Acts of the Apostles 2:42; 3:1; 20:36; 21:5; Ephesians 6:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Online resource
• Universalis offers the Liturgy of the Hours online

Books
• Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours (Catholic Book Publishing, 1999)
• Practical Guide for the Liturgy of the Hours by Shirley Darcus Sullivan (Catholic Book Publishing)
• A Companion to the Liturgy of the Hours: Morning and Evening Prayer by Shirley Darcus Sullivan (Catholic Book Publishing, 2004)

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.

Some of us know and respond instantly to a calling from God. Others, like you and me, hear God’s call gradually and sometimes over the course of many years. These “in between” times are always worthwhile as God’s call deepens within us and we grow in our understanding of ourselves and God.

You seem to be at a crossroads and ready to explore God’s call more intentionally. A first step is to get to know priests and brothers and their way of life. That can be done casually or formally, whatever works best for you at first. See how it feels to imagine yourself in their way of life and involved in their mission. It may help to learn more about the particular vocations to become a diocesan priest, a religious priest, or a religious brother. You’ll find more information about these vocations on the FAQ page of this website.

While you actively explore what it’s like to be a brother or priest, be sure to take all of these experiences to prayer. Check in with God daily, telling God of your desires, feelings, and thoughts. And don’t forget to listen! Spend time in silence, opening your heart to God. For some guidance, read through the article ”Four steps to hearing your call” by Benedictine Sister Anita Louise Lowe. You might also consider working with a spiritual director, someone who is skilled in helping people discern God’s calling in their lives.

Another avenue for discerning God’s call is to engage in some form of ministry. Become a catechist at your parish, volunteer as at a hospice, advocate for those in need as a board member or in your job, spend your vacation time on a service trip.

And if you are doing these things, and still feel drawn to become a priest or brother, then get in touch with the vocation director of your local diocese (for diocesan priesthood) or in the religious community with whom you feel most at home. It may simply be time to go for it!

My prayers are with you as you move more deeply into God’s calling to you.

Reprinted with permission from PrepareTheWord.com. ©TrueQuest Communications.