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This is a seven week meditation series examining the Christian meaning of suffering according to the thought of Pope St. John Paul II in his 1984 apostolic letter “Salvifici Doloris.” This series is published by The Archdiocese of San Francisco. Week 1 - Now I Rejoice in My Sufferings... Pope St. John Paul II was no stranger to suffering. Among the challenges he faced in life include living under Nazi and then communist occupation in Poland, attending clandestine seminary, losing both his parents and his brother at a young age, watching his friends, including his fellow seminarians, priests and Jewish friends be murdered during the Second World War, surviving a papal assassination attempt and then spending his last years of life crippled by Parkinson’s disease. Continue reading here. Week 2 - Roots of Suffering Seen in Reality of Evil The Holy Father, Pope Saint John Paul II, ends this second part of his letter with sobering words: “One thinks, finally, of war” (Paragraph 8, “Salvifici Doloris”). And we know he was no stranger to war. He was born only two years after the end of the First World War and survived the Second World War when many of his fellow clandestine seminarians, as well as Polish clerics, were murdered. Continue reading here. Week 3 -Following Job's Example It is unsurprising that St. John Paul II, in his meditation on the meaning of suffering, explores the problem of human pain and suffering in light of the biblical character of Job. We discover in examining the Book of Job not only rich content for some of the reasons behind suffering but also the way in which suffering undoubtedly affects our relationship with God. Continue reading here. Week 4 - Sin and Suffering Pope St. John Paul II continues his meditation on suffering by discussing one of the causes of suffering — evil in the form of personal sin. He writes: “The conscious and free violation of this good by man is not only a transgression of the law but at the same time an offense against the Creator, who is the first Lawgiver.” Continue reading here. Week 5 - Why Suffering? Because Love. In the first part of his meditation, John Paul II unpacks suffering in light of man’s nature, the transcendent quality of man’s suffering in particular, the vocational quality of man’s suffering, the cause of suffering (namely, evil) and the biblical character of Job and its relationship to justice. In the second part, he transitions his meditation on suffering in relationship to divine love. Continue reading here. Week 6 - The Suffering of Loneliness Saint John Paul II writes that “sacred Scripture is a great book about suffering” (“Salvifici Doloris,” Par. 6). He goes on to list examples of the ways in which we suffer from the Old Testament: Danger of death. The death of one’s own children. Infertility. Exile. Persecution and discrimination. Loneliness and abandonment. Continue reading here. Week 7 - Peace and Joy The narrative of a Christian’s life takes the shape of the life of Christ in the paschal mystery: Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. 2023 was certainly a “Good Friday” year. Armenia, the world’s first nation to declare the Christian faith its official state religion in 301 A.D., witnessed the ethnic and religious cleansing of 120,000 men, women and children in a region in the Near East called the Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh. The world remains largely unaware and indifferent to this genocide of Armenian Christians. We also saw the brutality of the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7 – Israel’s “9/11” so to speak – as well as a wave of anti-Jewish protests and attacks in the United States and throughout the world in a climate which was already increasing in its anti-Jewish incidents. Continue reading here.

The Nagorno Karabakh (known as Artsakh to Armenians) is an ethnically Armenian and therefore religiously Christian region in the South Caucasus. It’s a territory not officially part of the Republic of Armenia, but Armenians have been living there since the 7th century BC. This is the place where the Armenian alphabet was developed, and is home to monastic architectural masterpieces from the 4th century. On September 19th, 2023, Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim country, launched a full assault against the 120,000 civilian Christians, including 30,000 children in the disputed territory. (Why the territory is disputed is another story.) This attack came after 281 days of blockading the region from the Lachin Corridor, the only route connecting it to Armenia proper, and thereby cutting off food, gas, medical supplies effectively starving the residents. While this blockade is new, their desire to religiously and ethnically cleanse the region is not. Nor is their desire to create one seamless pan-Turkic region: Our goal is the complete elimination of Armenians. You, Nazis, already eliminated the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, right? You should be able to understand us” – Hajibala Abutalybov, former mayor of Azerbaijan's capital city, Baku, to a German audience in 2005. To continue reading on Cracks in Postmodernity, click here.

Leisure is not a thing to be done, it is a way to be. It is, for that reason, somewhat difficult to define. Pieper describes it as a “mental and spiritual attitude, a condition of the soul, an inward calm, of silence, of not being ‘busy’ and letting things happen.” Therefore, the definition of leisure is much richer than merely being on vacation, having fun, entertaining oneself, or doing “leisurely” activities. These things are often done for the sake of the rest needed to return to work. Leisure is not for the sake of work, it’s not for the sake of anything! I hope that you will find in this corner a way of leisure whether that is on your Sundays, or throughout the week when you need to connect with God. -Simone Rizkallah Visio Divina Series The Beauty of Architecture Series Litany of Leisure Series Iconography Lenten Series Hearth & Field Series Attending to the Word Series

“Thank you. We love you.” These words are printed on the bottom of the sales receipts from La La Land Kind Cafes. And that’s not at all. I was patronizing the coffee shop for the first time recently, and the Gen Z-er barista was working hard on the connection with our table—taking our pictures, asking us personal questions, giving us unsolicited affirmations, and then, as we were leaving, thanking us and telling us, “Love you guys so much.” It’s weird. But being “in the business of kindness” isn’t or at least shouldn’t be. Here’s a bit from the “About us” section of La La Land’s website: The name La La land represents a dream world. We set out to bring La La land to life. A place where you walk in and feel a true sense of joy for life. A place where you areloved for who you are. A place that brings together all human beings. A place where kindness is priority. Click here to finish reading this article on the Catholic Answers web site.

On a recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to celebrate Shabbat dinner with some fellow Catholics in the home of an Orthodox Jewish family—a family who, by and large, don’t socialize with Christians. For the other Catholics on this trip (sponsored by the Philos Project), this was their first experience of a Sabbath dinner, where “exotic” rituals are attached to the blessing and consumption of the traditional wine, the challah bread, and the meal. The experience for me was not unfamiliar, as I have celebrated what certain Catholics call a “Lord’s Day Dinner.” It is, in essence, a Christianized version of a Shabbat dinner. Instead of celebrating on Friday evening, the beginning of the Sabbath for Jews, it takes place on Saturday evening, which is when Sunday would have begun in biblical times. This is why Saturday evening vigil masses “count” for the Sunday liturgical obligation. Click here to finish reading the article on Catholic Answers Magazine Online.

The COVID-19 pandemic, it seems, has spared no one. Sure, some have been blessed to remain largely untouched physically or financially by the coronavirus pandemic. But the anxiety of these uncertain last few months, and the consequences of isolation and loneliness, seem to have found us all in some way. As a result, the larger questions about destiny and meaning — ones that were dismissed more easily before — today ask to be revisited in a totally new context. After the bruising year that was 2020, those questions invite Catholics to reflect deeply about our place in the post-COVID world. St. Augustine of Hippo lived in a time of chaos and civilizational collapse, marked by plague and political strife. His advice for times like these? Stay rooted in reality. “Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good,” he wrote in the year 410. “We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.” Such as we are, such are the times. The great 20th-century philosopher Simone Weil described being rooted as the least recognized and yet most important need of the human soul. But what can help us fulfill this need? Ironically, it was one of Weil’s admirers, St. Pope John Paul II, who argued that modern man’s loss of its own sense of humanity called for a “manifestation of that ‘genius’ which belongs to women.” To continue reading on Angelus News, click here.

The first time I read Josef Pieper’s book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, I felt I had finally encountered the philosophical and theological categories to explain the discomfort I felt in a culture obsessed with nonstop activity, imagery, and noise. Perhaps also being a first-generation American, with a Middle Eastern sensibility of leisure, I felt especially out of place. Unfortunately, it seems modern Christians have long abandoned the primacy of leisure, its foundation in the life of prayer and holiness, and, which Josef Pieper so brilliantly explains, its necessity in the restoration of a desirable culture. To continue reading the article, please click here.