Faith Encouraged Friends and Partners,
You are invited! Bring a friend!
Fr. Barnabas Powell
OK, so one of my most favorite movies in the whole world is "Princess Bride" and one of my most favorite scenes in the movie is when Vincent keeps using the word "inconceivable!" Finally, after so many times of hearing this word from Vincent, Inigo Montoya responds "You keep using that word. I do not…
"Father is not a title!" By now my parishioners and catechumens are sick of hearing me say this. But I say it so much because there is real healing truth in this reality. The Church isn't some collection of "club members" or a "society for the preservation of baklava." No, the Church is a Family.…
"It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones, after all." So says the author of Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder. But life is so very often not simple. It's complicated and difficult and filled with so many motivations all mixed together and hard to tease out the…
You've seen the bumper sticker "Practice Random Acts of Kindness." I confess I've seen them all over and my reaction to this altruistic admonition ranges (depending on my mood) from mild annoyance to a twinge of guilt. But rarely does this bumper sticker psychology move me to action. But, hey, that's the weakness of a…
Acts 9:10-19
In those days, there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord." And the Lord said to him, "Rise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus…
My girls love when I do this. Well, not really, but they do laugh. Sometimes, when we are all in the car, just driving down the road, everybody minding their own business. The conversation has lagged and the music on the radio is boring, when no one expects, I'll holler real loud and scare everyone…
It’s amazing how perspectives change as you get older.
When I was a kid in elementary school, we boys were absolutely convinced that the girls had cooties! Of course, we had no idea what “cooties” were, but if the girls had them then that meant we needed to be as far away from them as we…
In the beginning, God said... And with that action, God has been using speaking and hearing to start the process of metanoia (repentance) in the hearts of those who have "ears to hear."
There are so many examples of this pattern of God's actions that there are too many to mention them all. God "called" Abraham…
There was a stunning article in the January 2013 issue of Boston Magazine. It was entitled "Losing Our Religion" and the article begins by telling the story of a mother and her 9-year-old son watching a procession of the faithful from the Greek Orthodox church across the street from their home on our Great and…