Lake County Ohio Weal

234. An innate tension also exists between globalization and localization. We need to pay attention to the global so as to avoid narrowness and banality. Yet we also need to look to the local, which keeps our feet on the ground. Together, the two prevent us from falling into one of two extremes.  In the first, people get caught up in an abstract, globalized universe, falling into step behind everyone else, admiring the glitter of other people’s world, gaping and applauding at all the right times.  At the other extreme, they turn into a museum of local folklore, a world apart, doomed to doing the same things over and over, and incapable of being challenged by novelty or appreciating the beauty which God bestows beyond their borders. 235. The whole is greater than the part, but it is also greater than the sum of its parts.  There is no need, then, to be overly obsessed with limited and particular questions. We constantly have to broaden our horizons and see the ...

231. There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric.  So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom. 232. Ideas – conceptual elaborations – are at the service of communication, understanding, and praxis. Ideas disconnected from realities give rise to ineffectual forms of idealism and nominalism, capable at most of classifying and defining, but certainly not calling to action.  What calls us to action are realities illuminated ...

226. Conflict cannot be ignored or concealed. It has to be faced.  But if we remain trapped in conflict, we lose our perspective, our horizons shrink and reality itself begins to fall apart. In the midst of conflict, we lose our sense of the profound unity of reality. 227. When conflict arises, some people simply look at it and go their way as if nothing happened; they wash their hands of it and get on with their lives. Others embrace it in such a way that they become its prisoners; they lose their bearings, project onto institutions their own confusion and dissatisfaction and thus make unity impossible.  But there is also a third way, and it is the best way to deal with conflict. It is the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process. “Blessed are the peacemakers!” (Mt 5:9). 228. In this way it becomes possible to build communion amid disagreement, but this can only be achieved by those great persons wh...

Time is greater than space 222. A constant tension exists between fullness and limitation. Fullness evokes the desire for complete possession, while limitation is a wall set before us. Broadly speaking, “time” has to do with fullness as an expression of the horizon which constantly opens before us, while each individual moment has to do with limitation as an expression of enclosure. People live poised between each individual moment and the greater, brighter horizon of the utopian future as the final cause which draws us to itself. Here we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater than space. 223. This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time. One of the faults which we occasionally obse...

III. THE COMMON GOOD AND PEACE IN SOCIETY 218. Peace in society cannot be understood as pacification or the mere absence of violence resulting from the domination of one part of society over others. N or does true peace act as a pretext for justifying a social structure which silences or appeases the poor, so that the more affluent can placidly support their lifestyle while others have to make do as they can. Demands involving the distribution of wealth, concern for the poor and human rights cannot be suppressed under the guise of creating a consensus on paper or a transient peace for a contented minority. The dignity of the human person and the common good rank higher than the comfort of those who refuse to renounce their privileges. When these values are threatened, a prophetic voice must be raised. 219. Nor is peace “simply the absence of warfare, based on a precarious balance of power; it is fashioned by efforts directed day after day towards the establishment of...

Full disclosure; I have taken two courses at Notre Dame from Father Robert Taft. S.J a world class liturgist from the Byzantine tradition; so this presentation is very influenced by him  The Lord's Day is the primal liturgical feast; Easter is an outstanding Lord's day rather than the Sunday being a little Easter. The East maintains the Byzantine and Jewish conception of the liturgical day. The Lord's Day begins with sunset on Saturday (and ends with Sunset on Sunday). The West has remnants of this ideal in the Easter Vigil (and other vigils) and First Vespers on large feasts, and since Vatican II celebration of Mass on Saturday evening. Otherwise the West has operated mostly on midnight to midnight modern day often emphasizing as in the Anglican tradition Morning Prayer, Eucharist, Evensong rather than the Vespers, Matins, Divine Liturgy pattern of the East. Below is a list of links to worship services and websites that focus on the celebration of the Lord's...

A HYMN FESTIVAL N ovember 19, 2017 The Panorama of  the Noel Bulletin for this Sunday