Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Faith and Testimony

As thousands of faculty committees have found out, “teacher evaluation” is a hopeless business. There is, thank God, no teacher meter, and there never is going to be one. A teacher’s major contribution may pop…

Longing

I remember some time ago I visited a very wonderful home for old people. There were about forty people there and they had everything, but they were all looking toward the door. There was not…

Today’s One-Liner (#217)

Everything depends on these words: “I will” or”I will not.”  –Mother Teresa, Everything Starts from Prayer: Meditations on Spiritual Life for People of All Faiths, selected and Arranged by Anthony Stern, 42

Conscience Thunders

King summoned the bold protest of ancient sources—“Today we particularly need the Hebrew prophets”—whose words had goaded the movement past fear and silence. “They did not believe that conscience is a still, small voice,” he…

Today’s One-Liner (#216)

“I’m not interested in criticizing Sheriff Clark, I’m interested in converting Sheriff Clark!” –Hosea Williams, quoted in Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968

Appreciation Is the Sacrament

 Now the preaching of St. Francis was on this wise: “My sisters the birds, much are ye beholden unto God your creator, and alway and in every place ought ye to praise Him, because He…

Today’s One-Liner (#215)

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;  in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful.  –Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun, translated by Bill Barrett from the Umbrian…

Re-readable

Sometimes, it is sobering to reflect the entire corpus of the New Testament covers a mere 243 pages in the English Revised Standard Edition. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be literate do…

Today’s One-Liner (#214)

We might suggest this rich young man was one of Christ’s conspicuous failures along with, say, Judas, one of the thieves, the scribes, Pontius Pilate, Herod, and some of His home-town relatives. –James V. Schall,…