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The Deacon's Bench

To kick-start your Monday: a familiar rock anthem gets a new spin, courtesy the terrific (and justly celebrated) PS22 Chorus. A message of hopeful anticipation for this first Monday of Advent: don’t stop believin’.

A church in Detroit kicked off the new liturgical year by doing something besides lighting a candle and hanging purple: St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church held a gun buyback event Saturday, offering $20 for each weapon. The church, known for its summer basketball games that feature NBA stars as well as community service, used the event…

The first unhappy surprise that my wife and I discovered at the airport this holiday weekend: bag charges. Every. Bag. Checked. Ka-ching. The last time we flew, last summer, they let you check one for free. No more. They don’t exactly make traveling with carry-ons easy these days, with limits on liquids and random bag…

With a little free time to explore today (!), I wandered over to For Your Marriage, the website on the sacrament set up a couple years ago by the USCCB. I visited there a few times when it first debuted, but it had fallen off my radar screen.  I was curious to see how it’s…

Further proof that there are angels among us. A train door separated a three-year-old toddler from his father — and a woman was there to take the child’s hand and wait with him until his dad made it back. Watch what happened below.  No hug was ever more heartfelt. 

That was when American Catholics first stepped into church and experienced the “New Mass.” And Catholic traditionalist Kenneth J. Wolfe notes the event — and its aftermath — in today’s New York Times, citing as his villain Annibale Bugnini, who ended up writing the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy: Many of Bugnini’s reforms were aimed at…

Wherein the medium for evangelizing is an athlete’s face: Tonight is Tim Tebow’s last home game as a Florida Gator, and he is guiding the Gators to a comfortable 37-10 fourth-quarter lead over rival Florida State. His eye blacks contain the lettering “Heb 12 1-2,” a reference to a Bible passage from the Epistle to…

Well, if people see Mary all over the place, why not Jesus, too? From the Boston Globe: Until this week, Mary Jo Coady had never given her iron a second thought. Then she saw a likeness of Jesus staring back from its not-quite stainless steel bottom. Startled, Coady called in her daughters, both of them…

“Johnny announced to his mother one Sunday morning that he had two good reasons for not going to church that day.  ‘First, I am tired and need more sleep. Second, nobody likes me there.’  His mother replied: ‘Johnny, I have two good reasons for going to church. First, I have to make your bed. And…

I suspect most Catholics don’t know the name Martin Rinkart. But this Lutheran deacon and composer left us a beautiful testament to faith and thanksgiving: he composed the hymn “Now Thank We All Our God.” Some details about his life and times shed new light on this familiar hymn: German pastor Martin Rinkart served in…
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