Publisher @OrbisBooks, saint-whisperer @GiveUsThisDayLP. #TolstoysTalesofTrump. #MastersofSocialIsolation. Seeking meaning in the sacred and the absurd.
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Five more days!
Robert Ellsberg, “Saint-Watcher,” to Deliver 14th Annual Commonweal Lecture, April 7 fairfield.edu/news/archive/2…
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Today is the birthday of Carlo Carretto (1910-1988), who in middle age left his life as an activist to join the Little Brothers of Jesus, inspired by the example of Charles de Foucauld, the desert contemplative, who embraced the "hidden life" of Jesus in his years in Nazareth.
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One day during an arduous hike in the desert of Algeria, he accepted a companion's offer to inject him with medicine for a minor malady. But his friend picked the wrong vial and injected his leg with a paralyzing poison. Overnight his leg became useless.
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Like anyone he was stupefied by why God would allow such a thing to happen to one of his servants. But 30 yrs later he described it as a grace: "It was bad luck, yes. It was a misfortune, but God turned it into a grace. Life suddenly appeared to me as it was, an immense...
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personal exodus. Misfortune had thrust me upon new paths." Where was God in this story? In the part of a negligent bystander who watched an accident destroy a man's dreams? Or in the grace that led him from bitterness to a new state of acceptance? Carretto observed:
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Indelible images from Auschwitz. via @NYTOpinion nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opini…
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This whole thread from last year by @JamesMartinSJ on white images of Jesus is important. But the powerful conclusion stands out today.
But even more important than the pictorial images of Jesus we use (which are important to be sure) is seeing Christ alive in every person. Especially in those who are on the margins, those who are persecuted or those who are victimized in any way. Christ lives in them.
Show this thread
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On Easter Sunday, April 1 1945, Bd Giuseppe Girotti, an Italian Dominican, was killed with a lethal injection in Dachau concentration camp. He was arrested for providing Jews with false baptismal certificates. “A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you.”
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Then the scribes and teachers of the law began to murmur, “This man washes the feet of sinners, including women and even Muslims. Such a thing has not been seen.” And they issued dubia and warned the faithful, lest he lead others astray.
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Mother Maria Skobtsova died in the gas chamber of Ravensbruck concentration camp on the eve of Easter, March 31,1945, days before the liberation. She was arrested by the Gestapo for sheltering Jews in Paris. It was the culmination of a remarkable journey that began in Russia.
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Divorced twice, a poet, political activist, she fled Russia in 1923 with her two children and settled in Paris. After her daughter's death she underwent a deep conversion. Determined to live "a more authentic and purified life" she turned to social work among Russian refugees.
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Encouraged to become an Orthodox nun, she wished to develop a new type of monasticism, engaged in the world, marked by "the complete absence of even the subtlest barrier which might separate the heart from the world and its wounds." In her home she operated a soup kitchen.
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In becoming a nun she said, "I think service to the world is simply the giving of one's own sol in order to save others." During the Nazi occupation she helped rescue Jews and other political refugees, until her arrest by the Gestapo in 1943. Her writings @OrbisBooks
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Gordon Liddy has died. Obituaries describe him as “the mastermind behind the Watergate burglary.” Just saying.
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The same article includes one of my favorite lines fr9m Dorothy Day: “The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love.”
This is a challenging Easter message from #dorothyday (1964) Do we have the faith to see Christ in the poor? Do we have the faith to go to them (like the three women) or do we run away like Peter and pretend we don’t know him? catholicworker.org/dorothyda…
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