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Dec 11, 2024 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska
“Why are you standing there looking up at the sky?” Two men in white garments pose this question to the awestruck apostles. The apostles have just heard the resurrected Christ promise the coming baptism of the Holy Spirit—and then witnessed him disappear from their sight. The author of Luke and Acts recorded the incident nearly 2,000 years ago. It’s an event we still celebrate: the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Kevin Considine |Rhonda Miska
Sometimes a book needs to be read at a historical moment by as many people as possible. White Poverty is one of those rare books. In the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II’s new book, White Poverty, Barber, a Protestant pastor and a practitioner of Christian nonviolence, works to reconstruct America into a more just democracy with the renewed Poor People’s Campaign, which originated with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 and led to his assassination.
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska
1 Kgs 19:4-8Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9Eph 4:30—5:2Jn 6:41-51Elijah the prophet is running for his life. We don’t hear about it in today’s first reading, but earlier chapters of 1 Kings describe his conflict with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. These powerful, corrupt political leaders threaten Elijah with violence, so he runs into the desert.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska
“Mama, it’s a woman!”These words were uttered with wide-eyed excitement by 7-year-old Lucy Rau when she heard a gospel reflection at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham, North Carolina. The woman preacher was Jeanne Bernacki, a Catholic school campus minister with many years of ministry experience. “I asked her how it made her feel,” Lucy’s mother, Hilary Rau, recalls. “She thought for a minute and said, ‘Happy.
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Mar 22, 2024 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska |Mike Mastromatteo
Writer, scholar, and public intellectual bell hooks is known as a feminist, not a theologian. However, hooks had a deep spirituality that informed her life and work. In bell hooks’ Spiritual Vision: Buddhist, Christian, and Feminist, Nadra Nittle offers an insightful and carefully researched vision of hooks’ complex and fascinating spirituality.
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Feb 23, 2024 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska |Michelle Arnold
In his Confessions, St. Augustine famously asks, “What do I love when I love my God?” It seems a strange question. Some might say, “I love God!”—which is a circular response. This is the question that Kathleen Bonnette digs into in (R)evolutionary Hope: A Spirituality of Encounter and Engagement in an Evolving World. A loved one’s mental health crisis prompted Bonnette, an adjunct lecturer in theology at Georgetown University, to explore this and other related questions.
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Oct 13, 2023 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska
The majority of human beings live on less than two dollars a day. The contrast between the “haves” and “have nots” within and among nations is stark and growing starker. Some live with opulent excess while many struggle to meet their most basic needs for clean water, food, shelter, clothing, and medical care. If we strive to be disciples of Jesus and are attentive to scriptures, these difficult truths will unsettle us.
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Oct 6, 2023 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska |Shannon Schmidt
“From all continents comes an appeal for Catholic women to be valued first and foremost as baptized and equal members of the People of God.”These words from Enlarge the Space of Your Tent (the working document for the Continental Stage of the Global Synod) speak about the complicated relationship many women feel with the institutional church. Now Creating Spaces for Women in the Catholic Church offers nine searingly honest narratives of women sharing their struggles with the Catholic Church.
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Aug 4, 2023 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska |Michelle Arnold
Just ChurchBy Phyllis Zagano (Paulist Press, 2023)What does it mean for the Catholic Church to espouse justice to the world? In Just Church, Phyllis Zagano, scholar and member of the Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women, offers a timely exploration of this question. Zagano provides an overview of Catholic social teaching and synodality with an eye to how these streams of thinking inform discernment of women’s roles in the church.
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Jun 12, 2023 | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Rhonda Miska
Readings (Year A):Exodus 19:2 – 6aPsalms 100:1 – 2, 3, 5Romans 5:6 – 11Matthew 9:36 – 10:8Reflection: Remember how much God loves youI serve as communications director at a parish in Minnesota where a parishioner named Teena recently received an award from the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women for her volunteering. This meant I had the happy task of using our parish communications channels to tell Teena’s story and highlight her five decades of service in our parish community.
