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June 19 marked the conclusion of the Year of the Priest, intended by Pope Benedict to offer spiritual support to priests and appropriately to mark a century and a half since the death of St. John Marie Vianney, universal patron of the Catholic priesthood.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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7/8/10
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My mother worked for many years as bookkeeper at the B & S Electric Auto Service on Front Street in Woonsocket. Even after I was born she continued to “do the books” at our home for this small auto repair business.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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6/23/10
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St. John the Evangelist and St. Luke, the author of Acts of Apostles, are 50 days apart chronologically but they are in total agreement theologically regarding the gift of the Spirit.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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6/10/10
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A phrase that has stuck in my mind perhaps since seminary days is the observation, “There is no going beyond Jesus; there is just deeper and deeper involvement with him.” No doubt the “Quiet Corner” has been graced with these expressive words over the years in assorted forms and various renderings.
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BY FATHER JAMES A. KILEY
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5/27/10
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Surely it no coincidence that the first words out of the mouth of the resurrected Christ in St. John’s Gospel are a challenge to the Eleven Apostles to continue the ministry of reconciliation that Jesus had just inaugurated by his death on the cross: “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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5/19/10
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The divine and human natures of Jesus have regularly influenced church history. Sometimes the church has inclined greatly toward the divinity of Christ. During those centuries labeled the Dark Ages, monasticism, worship, prayer, the preservation of the Scriptures and other pious pursuits dominated most of Church life.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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5/14/10
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The Council of Jerusalem, highlighted in this Sunday’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, made Christianity’s gradual break with Jewish practices the official policy of the new church.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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5/6/10
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In the late 1950s Father Francis Xavier Durwell published a book first in French and then in English entitled “The Resurrection.” The publication was an influential event in the renewal of church theology and church liturgy which would reach its summit (or nadir, some would say) after the Second Vatican Council.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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4/30/10
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Good Shepherd Sunday is the ideal occasion to recall that the ecumenical movement within Christianity began in earnest in the 1920s when the various Protestant communities met to discuss agreements and disagreements concerning the Christian faith and similarities and differences regarding church order.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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4/24/10
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The Bishop of Rome has many titles. Certainly referring to our church’s earthly leader as “pope” is the most common usage. “Pope” is probably a development from “pater,” the Latin word for “father,” into the Romanesque “papa” and then eventually into the Gallicized “pape” and the Anglicized “pope.”
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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4/16/10
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The old saying famously advises, “Seeing is believing.” But a closer examination of this familiar phrase reveals that the coupling of these two participles is quite mistaken. Seeing is not believing; seeing is knowing.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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4/8/10
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A common but misleading expression is the phrase “Mass facing the people.” Equally misleading are the words “Mass with back to the people” or “Mass facing the wall.” Regardless of the architecture of a church or the interior design of a sanctuary, Mass is always, or always should be, offered facing God.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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4/3/10
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It is helpful to recall from time to time that Christianity is 2,000 years old, and also to remember that the Judaeo-Christian tradition was established about 3,500 years ago.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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3/27/10
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With all due respect, Jesus was a glutton for punishment. Jesus Christ exposed himself to the contempt of the Jewish leaders day after day, locale after locale. The Scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians and the Romans had nothing but scorn for the preacher from Galilee.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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3/19/10
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The Ark of the Covenant was a large treasure chest which the Jews carried with them during their desert sojourn and finally enthroned in the temple of Solomon in the inner sanctum called the Holy of Holies. The contents of this sacred trunk are mentioned in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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3/10/10
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It was a great privilege for Adam to be allowed by God to name all the animals. To name something or someone, or even to know the name of something or someone, was an ancient device for revealing a special relationship between the namer and the named. Adam gave names to all the animals as God had bid him.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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3/4/10
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Fewer aspects of traditional Roman Catholic piety have changed more over the past 100 years than the various practices of self-denial that motivated and strengthened the saints and the faithful over the centuries.
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FATHER JOHN KILEY
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2/25/10
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Mary Daly, militant feminist theologian, or perhaps better, belligerent feminist theologian from Boston College passed away recently. Daly made headlines a few years ago when she refused to allow men to attend her classes on the Chestnut Hill campus.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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2/18/10
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English novelist W. Somerset Maugham observed that there is nothing particularly blessed about poverty. He wrote, “Poverty is the surest route to bitterness and resentment.”
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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2/11/10
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The Blessed Virgin Mary emerges twice in the Gospel according to St. John. Her initial arrival on the scene occurs in this coming Sunday’s Gospel account, the wedding feast at Cana, and her final appearance is made at the death and crucifixion of Jesus on Mount Calvary. Thus St. John frames Jesus’ entire pubic life with vignettes that feature Mary.
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BY FATHER JOHN A. KILEY
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1/14/10
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