Long Suffering

Join us for another Top Ten list from the Luxurious Corner Booth. This time, talk about our top ten suggestions to kick it up a notch and enhance your praying of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, continues to be in the news as it continues to grow more potent and more prominent. Both secular and religious corners of society are rightly focusing attention on the ethical, moral, and practical concerns for AI. Answering whether it is good, or bad, or a little of both, is something everyone should be considering.

While all suffering is painful, some suffering seems worse than others. We particularly struggle with suffering that lasts a long time, and can even extend to years. This type of long suffering can sometimes cause discouragement, depression, and may even lead us into the sin of despair.

Our nation has followed a disturbing trend of late. It seems we have lost the ability to practice civil discourse and respect for free expression and exchange of ideas in the public square. This has, at the same time, resulted in an increasing trend of tragic violence to plague our nation. We need Jesus.

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross is a Catholic Feast day that brings due attention to the Holy Cross on which our Lord and Savior achieved our reconciliation with the Father. In this Feast, we gaze upon the Cross less as an instrument of suffering and torture (while this is still certainly true), but more on the healing and reconciliation it brings.

Pope Leo XIV addressed a group of French Catholic politicians recently on pilgrimage to the Vatican. He had many good words of advice for them, while he also offered some challenges for them relating to a tendency he sees in many Catholic politicians to separate their faith life from their public life.

A lot of folks, even some Catholics, have an erroneous idea about what the Church actually teaches about the Communion of the Saints. We do not go to the Saints INSTEAD of Jesus, but we call upon them in ADDITION to Jesus and THROUGH the Body of Christ.

When the Bible uses the word KNOW, it speaks of a level of intimacy reserved for our absolute closest relationships. To know Jesus is to living in a relationship of divine intimacy with him. It is not enough to know about Jesus, we must know him intimately. And he in return knows us intimately.

A lot of Catholics know at least a little about the process for those who who wish to be baptized Catholic or come into Full Communion with the Catholic Church. It is a process formerly known as RCIA, but is now OCIA. However, we can all do a little better job of evangelization by inviting people into the process, people we are in relationship with, our friends and family.

There is an interesting Catholic Tradition that speaks of degrees of glory in heaven. But, many folks might be confused by this concept, especially when we view it through an earthly lens.