Author: J. Thorp

Journey to the Heart of Love

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I’ve been meaning to write a blog post, then putting it off time and again because I don’t know how I can possibly do it. For more than year now God has been moving in me, pulling me in what seems like a hundred different directions, softening and shaping my stony heart in various ways and encouraging, pushing, even forcing me to surrender, little by little, to Him.

In some sense, it has all come to a head, in this month of the Sacred Heart, as that seems to be the destination toward which He is calling me, the burning, bleeding, beating heart of Love Himself, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I don’t know how explain the connections in one coherent post, so I’ve decided to attempt something I’ve not done in a long while: short daily posts to explain how God has lured me toward the Heart of Love. Continue reading →

Urgent Conversion

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Sometimes when Jodi and I rise early in the morning to reflect on the daily Scripture readings and pray together, I fail to check the calendar for special feasts. Instead I go straight for the daily missal and read the regular readings for the day, only to open our emailed gospel reflection to learn that it’s the Feast of Such-and-such, with a special gospel reading.

That is what happened on Thursday morning, with the happy result that it caused me to focus on the call to urgency and action in our conversion.

Continue reading →

Airedale Chronicles: My Lord and My Dog

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PupMug

Bruno underfoot…

One of the best and most trying aspects of owning an Airedale “puppy” is Bruno’s relentless desire for affection and affirmation. In our household we joke that I finally have someone else who shares my primary love languages: physical touch and words of affirmation. If that’s true, I know now why I drive my wife and children as crazy as I do. As a little pup, this constant desire to be in contact with us and praised by us was adorable—less so when a fifty-pound dog (however young) piles into the back of your knees on the stairs, when he circles your feet while you are carrying groceries or sits on them while you are walking.

And sometimes I get impatient, forgetting he is not quite ten months old, and wish he would “move!” “get back!” or “go lay down!”

A week or so back I came home from work, and Bruno was waiting at the top of the stairs above our split-level front door, sitting lopsided on one hip with his big front paws on the first step down so he could better see who was coming. As I came up, he came down, making it nearly impossible to pass, and I told him to get back. He followed at my knee, nosed my hands as I sat to take off my shoes, then licked my pant leg. Continue reading →

Liturgy and Sacraments: The Spirit at Work in the World

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Blogger’s Note: This was my final short reflection paper for Module II of the Catechetical Institute, on liturgy and the sacraments. I continue to be drawn toward the person and activity of the Holy Spirit, which I’ve been slow to comprehend in the past.

The Spirit is the fuel of the Church, the energy and life force of the Body of Christ. And we can’t get him through heroic effort. We can only get him by asking for him. That’s why, for the past two thousand years, the Church has begged for this power from on high. Jesus told us that the Father would never refuse someone who asked for the Holy Spirit. So ask! And ask again! Realize that every liturgy is a begging for the Holy Spirit. (Bishop Barron, Daily Gospel Reflection 5/8/18).

The second pillar of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), “The Celebration of the Christian Mystery,” pertains to liturgy and the sacraments. The opening paragraphs (CCC 1066-2068) connect back to the first pillar, “The Profession of Faith,” by re-asserting God’s plan outlined in the Creed:

“For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth ‘the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.’” For this reason, the Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation (CCC 1067).

The liturgy in its various forms celebrates the great mystery of Jesus’ saving mission. It is the “public work” (leitourgos) of the Church: the “participation of the People of God in ‘the work of God’” (CCC 1069), which manifests her as a visible sign of communion between God and man (CCC 1071).  The Church is born on Pentecost, the new Body of Christ on earth following the ascension of the resurrected One, and Jesus acts “in and with” this body through the sacramental economy (CCC 1076). The fruits of this mystery are shared liturgically, especially through the sacraments, “efficacious signs” (CCC 1131) instituted by Jesus and entrusted to the Church to give us the grace we need to live lives of holiness. Continue reading →