September 2019

When God created man in His own image, He gave him a vocation in the same breath: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen 1:28).

We are awash in data, awash in claims for and against Christianity—and for and against any number of competing ideologies and lifestyles, ranging from Marxism, gender ideology, and radical feminism to health fads and fashion. One lifetime isn’t enough to weigh the merits of each of these; in the meantime, dialogue is often reduced to shouting slogans back and forth (a problem not limited to religious dialogue, to be sure). In the chaotic shopping-mall environment of modern media, the call to “follow Christ” or “repent and be baptized” or even “love God and your neighbor” must compete with “just do it” and “have it your way,” and with a million images that wordlessly present the modern gospel of sex, money, fame, and power.

How can Sunday be a special day, a different kind of day? How can we mark it as a day of rest and celebration in the Lord?

There is no simple formula for developing the essential Sabbath habits, given the differences in circumstances and state of life in which we find ourselves

We cannot simply achieve our vocation. We need to receive it, and this is why we need Christ, the Church, and, perhaps surprisingly, Sunday—the Sabbath. Sunday is a day of worship, rest, of celebration, of receptivity. It has been said that “More than the Jewish People have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” The same can be said for Christians. More than Christians keeping their Sunday obligation, the Lord’s Day has kept the Church.

All prayer is a raising of the heart to God, but every believer responds to God’s invitation differently, so this raising of the heart can be expressed in many ways. Christian Tradition has particularly recognized three primary expressions of prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplation (CCC 2699).

The Bible is by far the most popular book in history. Bibles are everywhere. There are millions of copies in nearly every language, and the Bible is posted on thousands of websites. Because of the availability of the Scriptures, it’s tempting to take their existence for granted. But it hasn’t always been this way. It actually took centuries for the Bible as we know it to come together.

On a recent episode of The Road to Emmaus, Dr. Hahn spoke with his long-time friend Rob Corzine, Vice President of Programs at the St. Paul Center. Dr. Hahn and Corzine discuss the recent Pew Research Center poll on Catholics’ belief in the Eucharist. Many commenters have focused on the result that only 31 percent of Catholics believe in the Real Presence. But as Corzine and Dr. Hahn point out, the researchers asked another important question: “What do you think the Catholic Church teaches about the Eucharist?”

I had the opportunity to meet Mother Teresa twice in my life. One of these times was in 1995, when I gave a talk at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. My host, who was Hindu, knew I was Catholic and arranged the meeting. Mother Teresa asked us questions about our lives and our work. She also talked about her work and, in particular, her desire to open a house in China. She was asked once, “Why China?” and she responded, “My great desire is to meet anybody who has nobody.” Oh if we could live this way just a bit.