A reader wrote in to let us know of the following:

Father Tom, would you be able to put a link on Adventus and 2000 Stories to the Alpha Canada Website ?

An important Quebec-wide Alpha bilingual conference will be offered at Becket (and the adjoining school) Friday August 15 and Saturday August 16, 2008. Monseigneur Gilles Lemay who has been closely involved with Alpha in Québec City is the Guest of Honour for the opening.

2 tracks are being offered: Basic (for churches who wish to start a new Alpha Course and learn for example how to prepare a Weekend of the Holy Spirit) and Advanced (for teams who would like to improve their course impact and learn ways to better reach Genexers outside the church).

There will also be presentations on Youth Alpha, the Alpha Marriage Course (Elle et Lui en français), and other specialty courses (e.g. Alpha in Prisons, in the Military, in the Workplace).

Alpha teams have been praying for this event and are expecting some 400 participants including members of the Catholic clergy who may not yet be familiar with Alpha.

• Go to www.alphacanada.org (choose Français or English on the top left hand corner).
• Click on Activités & Conférences
• Once the Montreal Conference shows up, click on Plus d’information - it brings you to the Registration Page.

Hope this helps!

Anne Rice’s second novel about the life of Jesus is out and it’s got rave reviews (including one by Peter Kreeft).

Check it out!

Cliquez ICI.

From a faithful reader:

Since Easter is the celebration of the Crucifixion & Resurrection of Christ which took place during Passover why do we not celebrate it at the same time as the celebration of Passover? When did the change take place and why?

First, a bit of background. The feast of Passover, in the Jewish calendar, is on a fixed date, the 14 day of the month of Nisan. Just as Christmas can fall on any day of the week, so can Passover.

That being said, the timing of the Passover that was connected to the death and resurrection of Christ meant that Jesus died on a Friday, that the Passover also fell on a sabbath, and that Jesus rose on a Sunday.

We therefore have a double meaning regarding the timing of the pascal mystery: it is connected to Passover, but it is also connected to the sabbath. Since the Passover does not always fall on a sabbath, however, the early church was faced with having to decide how to celebrate Easter and respect this double meaning.

Some Christians, known as Quartodecimans (meaning “14th-day-ers”), celebrated Easter on 14 Nisan, i.e. along with Passover. The early tradition in Rome, however, was to celebrate Easter on the Sunday following Passover; unlike the quartodeciman tradition, it therefore preserved (as best as possible) the double meaning.

Why is Sunday so important? It has to do with the meaning of the resurrection itself. Sunday is the first day of the week, but spiritually it is also the “eighth day” of creation itself! The Bible depicts the earth as having been created in 6 days, with God resting on the 7th. Humans (i.e. Adam and Eve) were created on the 6th day — but Christ, the new Adam, was killed on the 6th day (a Friday). God rested on the 7th day, just as Christ rested in the tomb on the 7th day. Yet on Sunday, the day after, Christ rose from the dead in a new and glorified body — it is a new state of being, a new form of existence that the universe has never seen before! In the resurrection, God has done a new thing, and every Sunday ever after is his pledge to make “all things new”.

There is, therefore, a powerful spiritual connection between day of Sunday and the resurrection of Christ. The “quartodeciman controversy” threatened to divide the Church at one point, until the very first ecumenical council settled the matter in favour of the Sunday tradition.

For more on the spirituality of Sunday, I recommend the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, entitled Dies Domini.

A friend writes:

I have a question that I hope you can answer for me or maybe give me some direction on. How do you keep focused when praying. I know this may sound odd, but I often experience my mind drifting from one thought to another while saying my nightly prayers. The harder I try to keep what I’m saying front and centre the more distracted I become.

Your question about distractions during prayer is very old. Many saints faced such issues, and a lot of wisdom has been passed down through the ages about this.

The first major piece of wisdom the saints have shared with us is that, in general, we should not pay too much attention to distractions - otherwise, the fact of distractions becomes the distraction itself! Distractions represent some of the basic flotsam and jetsam of our minds. Only those who have passed completely through the Dark Night of the Soul are truly free from them. So, in the meantime, we just need to deal with them while accepting that they will likely be present for most of our spiritual life.

Having a written text helps deal with distractions. Reading written texts are our way to speak to God, or writing down our thoughts in a spiritual journal, are great helps in this, because as the distraction comes it is easy to come back to the original thread once the distraction passes, rather than having to go searching for it again.

The strength of distractions are greatly depends on our current interior state. For example, when we are tired they tend to increase. They also tend to be stronger in the evening than in the morning - that is partly why monks do most of their meditation in the morning, as they don’t have a day’s worth of issues to process while trying to pray.

Finally, while distractions should generally be ignored, there are two exceptions to this rule:

1. When a specific distraction repeats itself. This kind of distraction usually represents some sort of “worldly attachment” that, if broken, will set free our spiritual life even more. That being said, this kind should normally be brought to a spiritual director, as the root issue behind the distraction is not always obvious.
2. When a specific distraction activates our conscience. This can be because the distraction tempts our mind to dwell on some sort of sin (dreams of revenge, for example, or impure thoughts, or temptations to self-pity, etc.). It can also be because God is actually speaking to us in a more direct way, such that we *can’t* just push ignore the thought - the distraction is not simply a distraction, it is a direct communication from God.

In the case of sinful distractions, the best route is to begin to pray rote prayers (such as a decade of the rosary), so that the distraction can’t get a “foothold” in our mind. In the case of the “communication from God” distractions, my advice is to journal about it. Keep a journal book handy, just in case such moments come, and write these things down. Then, when the moment passes, go back to the usual prayers, and bring the written notes to your spiritual director.

(Thanks to Valérie for the link!)

Recently, I discovered a clip from the television show, E.R. It showed a man facing the end of life with the burden of a perceived sin causing him great anxiety. He shares his distress with a so called spiritual councilor who cannot respond to his need for absolution, He states at one point “I need a real chaplain, who believes in a real God and a real hell.” What he wants is objective religious truth, what he was getting was subjective feel good new-age. Very intelligent script for a TV show. Here’s the clip from: ER

Despite the many evils that circulate on the Internet, I firmly believe that it can also be a powerful tool for good. The Kiva website is an example of what I mean.

Kiva is an example of micro-financial lending, in which participants like you and me don’t *give* money so much as *lend* it to micro-entrepreneurs who are then obliged to pay it back. Of course, by paying it back the money then re-enters the borrowing and lending cycle and can be used to help another micro-entrepreneur.

This kind of thing really tickles me, especially given my background in finance. I mentioned in my previous post how the poor are often caught in cycles of usurious loans which keep them down. These kinds of programs are a real chance to break free.

The big headline across the new lately is the dramatic rise in global food prices. This issue touches me in a special way, because in college I once did a paper studying starvation economics, i.e. how “standard” economics changes when food availability reaches critical levels. It isn’t pretty, and experience shows that one round of starvation economics is sufficient to create structures of social injustice that can last generations.

I therefore submit to you that the main reason why food prices have risen is due to our values, and not our capacity to actually produce food.

For example, did you know that in 2004 the market for pet food for cats and dogs was $14.7 billion? And that is just cats and dogs, not fish or birds or other exotic creatures.

And then there is agricultural feed. According to this Wikipedia article, 635 million TONS of feed are grown each year as food for animals. Some of it is food we cannot eat, but is grown on land that could be used to grow food for humans. Some of it (like corn) we could eat, and by diverting that food to feed animals, not people, it actually inflates the price and makes it harder for the poorest to purchase.

Now some may argue that we actually *do* eat that corn, in the form of meat. The problem is that this is a very inefficient kind of diet. I once read that it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. As long as the possibility of starvation economics reigns, plant matter is more ethical as people food, not animal food.

I am not proposing we all become vegetarians.

I am proposing that richer nations immediately impose a tax on the sale of animals and animal products (such as food that comes from animals, like meat, or food that goes into animals, like pet food).

This tax would accomplish two things.

First, the price of animal products would rise. Supply and demand being what it is, demand for such products would drop. People would have to compete less with animals, so prices for human food could drop.

Second, this tax would then be used to help those at risk avoiding the trap of starvation economics. Insurance and credit union systems could be put in place to give people options in lean times, thus avoiding the trap of falling into usurious debt (or worse, having to sell off their land and other means of production).

As a final point, I think the Church might be in a special position to help. The creation of systems of wealth transfer from animals to the poor will do no good if that wealth gets diverted through corruption. The struggle for genuine property rights regardless of so-called social status is part of the path of justice — and part of the Gospel of Christ.

Here is a quick line from an article by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, an article definitely worth the read:

Oh, you miss that old man when you are here! You feel the presence of his absence. The souvenir shops know. They sell framed pictures and ceramic plates of the pope: John Paul. Is there no Benedict? There is. A photo of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger being embraced by . . . John Paul. It’s now on my desk in New York. They have their hands on each other’s shoulders and look in each other’s eyes. A joyful image. They loved each other and were comrades.When I was writing a book about John Paul, I’d ask those who’d met him or saw him go by: What did you think, or say? And they’d be startled and say, “I don’t know, I was crying.”John Paul made you burst into tears. Benedict makes you think. It is more pleasurable to weep, but at the moment, perhaps it is more important to think.A Vatican reporter last week said John Paul was the perfect pope for the television age, “a man of images.” Think of the pictures of him storm-tossed, tempest-tossed, standing somewhere and leaning into a heavy wind, his robes whipping behind him, holding on to his crosier, the staff bearing the image of a crucified Christ, with both hands, for dear life, as if consciously giving Christians a picture of what it is to be alive.Benedict, the reporter noted, is the perfect pope for the Internet age. He is a man of the word. You download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it.