The Christmas season is nearly upon us, and it has some people ready to watch their old favorites. White Christmas. It’s a Wonderful Life. Elf. Home Alone. A Christmas Story. The classics are too numerous to count! How could you ever choose the best one?
Br. Tito and I set out to answer that question. With the help of a special guest, we’ve compiled a 32-movie bracket for a head-to-head competition to determine the best of them all. If you’d like to follow along, be sure to see the bracket below and see how well you can predict our answers!
The sad reality of 2020 continues on. After nine months of cancellations, closures, and tragedies, COVID is after Christmas now too. Time will soon tell how dangerous everyone’s Thanksgivings were, what with college students coming home, people still traveling in large number to gather in large groups. I pray that it will not turn out to be a devastating disaster… but I fear it will.
My hope is that we can learn our lesson before Christmas comes: please stay home.
But before you all attack me for being against family and tradition, that telling people to stay home for Christmas is the last thing a priest should do, let me off you this: this might be the most meaningful Christmas of your life. Stripped of all the commercialism and chaos, removed from the traveling and large parties, what we might just find ourselves with a silent night to behold, a simple evening of prayer to touch our hearts. We might just have ourselves a Christmas that captures the true meaning of the season.
In this video, I’d like to suggest that Christmas (and by extension, Advent) is more than just gift-giving and merry-making, it is an opportunity to realize that our world is fundamentally broken and in need of a savior. It is an opportunity to get in touch with our deep longing for new life, and to realize that that new life is already before us, and yet on the horizon.
We behold but a taste of the gift that is to come. Jesus came once 2000 years ago to begin the mission, but we still await the fullness of his glory in the new Jerusalem.
The world is an incredible place. All around us are mysteries of science and nature, dazzling us with their magnificence. Thanks to the internet, we have the opportunity to share them with the world.
In this episode of Upon Friar Review, I share with Fr. Patrick some of the craziest things I could find on the internet, things like the scale of the universe, human hair on an atomic level, crazy powerful shrimp, disillusioning sounds, and super slow motion impacts. It’s a pretty awesome episode.
Luckily, I think this episode is worth the wait! Last week, Br. Tito and I looked at the popular show Unsolved Mysteries,recently rebooted by Netflix. Filled with drama and intrigue, created with Netflix money, we both agree that it is an interesting show to watch.
But it does have a dark side, and we don’t just mean the murders. While entertaining, we discuss the potential this show has to promote conspiracy theories and distrust in institutions. This may be the last thing that we need right now.
But hey, you be the judge! Let us know what you think!
Last week was yet another difficult week for the Catholic Church. The Vatican released a report after its two-year investigation of former Cardinal McCarrick, and the findings were not great.
Everyone, it seemed, from seminarians up to John Paul II knew something of McCarrick’s abuse. Much was shrouded in mystery and disseminated through rumors, but a lot of people knew something, and the ones who spoke up were silenced.
How do we make sense of this? In this video, I look at last week’s Sunday reading in an attempt to shed some light on the situation, all in the hopes that we can learn from it and be the people Christ calls us to be.
Breaking In The Habit 