By Pauline Lev Imagine walking into a quiet, naturally lit room dotted with low shelves containing various items. Everything in the room has a place, and everything is in its place. The room has a simple beauty that alludes to peaceful order. There are 10 children in the room, all between the ages of 3 and 6. In one corner, a child works at a small model altar, placing a model chalice, paten and crucifix on it, naming them, and prayerfully enjoying the beauty of the simple setting. At a low table a child is slowly and carefully pouring dry beans from one glass container to another. She does it again and again. At a small rug on the floor, an adult is proclaiming the Scripture of the Annunciation to…
by Josie Bopp After hearing a laundry list of to-dos from the Messiah during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, ending with a command to perfection might have almost seemed like a tease to the Jewish audience of his day. What more could this man actually demand of us? The beatitudes, with their praises for those who are meek, to the teaching that anger against a brother is akin to murder, to the command to love even our enemies, is difficult enough, until Jesus wraps it all up with an even more problematic and puzzling phrase: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). But rather than a final command piled on at the end of a list of seemingly impossible demands, Jesus is…
By Pauline Lev Are you living a happy, fulfilled life? The world tells us what it thinks will make us happy. St. Thomas Aquinas grouped worldly pursuits into four categories: wealth, pleasure, power and honor. These four things are pillars of our society and are what you could call a part of the imaginative vision of our culture. An imaginative vision, according to the book “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission,” is “a set of assumptions and a way of looking at things that is largely taken for granted rather than argued for.” Our culture’s imaginative vision looks through these lenses of wealth, pleasure, power and honor. They are the end goal of human activity in the pursuit of happiness. The problem is, they don’t actually make us happy. Father John…
By Wendy Royston “Faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:17) Although the letter of St. James uses this phrase to help us understand the relationship between believing in the love of God and showing it to others, the statement often leaves us even more confused, wondering whether we can—or even if we must—earn the gift of eternal salvation. “Can I work or earn my way into heaven? No, I can’t,” said Father Tom Hartman, pastor of St. Michael Parish in Sioux Falls. Instead, the passage is intended to reveal the wholeness of Christianity. “If we’re simply saying that we have this faith, but we aren’t actually modeling ourselves after the Giver—Jesus himself—then, in some ways that faith is worthless,” he said. The passage from…
By Josie Bopp Tell all your sins to a priest—regularly. You can’t get divorced. No eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Remember to follow the 10 Commandments. If you’re not Catholic, you’re probably going to hell. Oh, and don’t forget the big one: don’t have sex before marriage. For many who grow up Catholic, the Church is sometimes characterized as one resounding “no.” The experience of faith is sometimes mistakenly reduced to a set of rules and regulations, with the sense that if all of them are followed, a good Catholic will stumble his or her way into heaven, arriving with the correct answers, albeit having lived a seemingly miserable life. Even for those outside the Church, a caricature of the law-obsessed Catholic Church prevails. [caption id="attachment_6051" align="alignright" width="300"] Dr.…
By Pauline Lev We all have a story Every Christian who walks the path of the disciple has a story to tell. We live in a culture hostile in many ways to a life following Jesus. It takes a conscious, active choice to follow Him. Our journey from pre-evangelization to discipleship takes us deeper and deeper into his sheepfold, into the kingdom of God and the Catholic Church. Jesus invites us to the sheepfold of his Church, and he never stops inviting us to enter more and more deeply into his love and his mercy. A disciple is always learning and growing. Each person’s story of this journey is different. Some people’s stories are slow-moving, and it might be hard for them to pinpoint the actual moment when they chose…
By Renae Kranz In today’s world, bringing faith into the workplace seems like a terrifying prospect. Very few of us want to approach a co-worker to talk about religion, and fewer would even know how to do that. Let me relieve your anxiety. Bringing faith to work doesn’t have to mean overtly talking about your beliefs about divine realities. It’s more about revealing your entire self to the people around you and living the virtues of your Catholic faith in all areas of life. It’s about living an integrated, whole life with God always at the center of the things we do and say. And it’s easier than you might think. Meaning in work [caption id="attachment_5955" align="alignright" width="300"] Joe Rutten, director of the Benedictine Leadership Institute at Mount Marty University.…
By Renae Kranz It’s no secret our culture has been moving away from Christian values for decades now, and that move to a more secular world with no need for religion or God seems to be picking up speed. In this environment, Catholic parents worry their children will grow up and walk away from their faith—and they often feel powerless to stop it. What many parents forget is the real influence they have over how their children see and embrace their relationship with God and how well they learn their faith. And if parents don’t use that influence to help deeply ingrain their children’s faith in their hearts, our culture will sweep them into its secular current. Father Shaun Haggerty says parents are the key to passing on the Catholic…
By Renae Kranz Little is said about St. Joseph in the Bible. He himself says even less. In fact, he says absolutely nothing. And yet, he is the patron of the entire Catholic Church and of our diocese. Father Shane Stevens, pastor at St. Mary Parish in Dell Rapids, calls him the great saint of silence. This quiet man let his actions speak for him in the way he cared for Mary and Jesus and in the way he answered the call the Lord had for his life. He left a courageous legacy of faith behind as an example for the rest of us to strive toward. And he is a saint we can all turn to in times of trouble. Patron of our diocese [caption id="attachment_5844" align="alignright" width="300"] The…
By Renae Kranz [caption id="attachment_5775" align="alignright" width="300"] Photo by Ellen Keena[/caption] When you look at the face of Jesus on the cross, do you see only the face of the God who set us free? Or maybe you see the face of a man in excruciating pain, his head hanging low in agony. It’s hard to imagine the pain, emotions and thoughts our Lord had while he hung on the cross, dying for each one of us. We do know from the Gospels that he did several important things in his last moments. Some seem somewhat random or unimportant, but each word he says from the cross is carefully chosen to open the door to our salvation and establish the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Father James Morgan, rector…
