This week's edition of Our Sunday Visitor featured an article from Father Barron regarding the way in which powerful spiritual truths are often conveyed by flawed human vessels. These vessels, then, can be effectively used the in work of evangelization.
Some weeks ago, I gave a sermon in which I mentioned Keith Richards, the lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones. I recounted how struck I was by a passage from Richards’ autobiography,“Life,” in which the guitarist described the almost maniacal dedication with which he and his bandmates set out to learn Chicago blues. “Benedictines,” he said, “had nothing on us.”
I urged my listeners to approach their spiritual lives with the same “Benedictine” focus and fervor that the young Rolling Stones had in regard to the blues.
This past weekend, Father Barron had the opportunity to see Bob Dylan in concert at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago. Read his synopsis of this legendary concert experience here.
Last Saturday night, I saw Bob Dylan, one of my great heroes, at the Riviera Theatre on the northside of Chicago.
With me were Bobby Mixa and Rozann Carter from the Word on Fire office and Mike Leonard, the executive producer of the Catholicism Series, who last saw Bob Dylan in 1963!
The theatre is fairly small (capacity around 2500), and I managed, with Bobby’s help, to get pretty close to the stage.
There were a number of aging hippies with gray pony tails and granny glasses, but I was surprised by the number of young people who were on hand.
Dylan is one of those rare figures from the golden age of rock and roll who has managed to hold his appeal across the decades.
His voice is pretty much shot, but he sang with a lot of passion—and his band, led by the great guitarist Charlie Sexton, was terrific...
During coverage of the World Cup, a Hyundai commercial premiered which depicts a representation of the Catholic Mass that is dedicated, instead, to the sport of soccer. Father Barron comments on the commercial here:
I just watched a commercial for Hyundai which relies, strangely enough, on the quasi-religious devotion that some people have for soccer. The piece commences with a group of devotees carrying a miniature soccer ball into church in a kind of monstrance and singing the Latin words, “Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, ora pro nobis,” (Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, pray for us). Later in the video, a man kneels down at an altar rail and opens his mouth in the manner of a communicant about to receive the Eucharist, but the “minister” gives him, not a host, but a piece of pizza...