{"id":138,"date":"2007-08-28T19:57:53","date_gmt":"2007-08-28T19:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/its-a-major-award.html"},"modified":"2007-08-28T19:57:53","modified_gmt":"2007-08-28T19:57:53","slug":"its-a-major-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/its-a-major-award.html","title":{"rendered":"It’s a major award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catholic Spotlight is a series of podcasts sponsored by the Catholic Company.
\nThey’re sponsoring a giveaway of 5 signed copies of my newest book Prove It: You<\/em>. Go here to read more about it and enter. <\/a>
\nThe book is about living the Christian life, so to say it’s about “morality” doesn’t quite get it. I start by discussing who God is – and what that means if God is who we say He is. Moving on to the human person, and then dealing with more specific topics and issues. I don’t go the usual “start with sex” or the big bad culture route. I hit what I think are more fundamental issues first: what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, the use of time, \u00a0the issue of honesty, and the definition of love, then <\/em>moving on to issues related to sexuality, other body matters, justice and charity.
\nIt will not surprise you that I begin and end with Pope Benedict. At the beginning of the book I quote something he said in Cologne on World Youth Day:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

I know that you as young people have great aspirations, that you want to pledge yourselves to build a better world. Let others see this, let the world see it, since this is exactly the witness that the world expects from the disciples of Jesus Christ; in this way, and through your love above all, the world will be able to discover the star that we follow as believers.<\/em><\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And I end with part of his homily for Midnight Mass, 2006:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Yet now further questions arise: how are we to love God with all our mind, when our intellect can barely reach him? How are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has “abbreviated” his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created.<\/font><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then I really <\/em>end with Pope John Paul II:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Be Not Afraid!”<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

<\/span><\/h2>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll be recording the podcast for that book soon. You can listen to the August podcast interview I did with Catholic Spotlight on The Apostles <\/em>and the study guide for it here. <\/a>
\n(And for those of you who have been wondering about my bookstore – my PayPal account got hacked into a few months ago, and I have to actually sit down and spend time on the phone with PayPal to get it straightened out. I will try to do that in the next few days and get that reopened.)
\nOh, and PIY isn’t officially out yet. I’ll let you know when it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catholic Spotlight is a series of podcasts sponsored by the Catholic Company. They’re sponsoring a giveaway of 5 signed copies of my newest book Prove It: You. Go here to read more about it and enter. The book is about living the Christian life, so to say it’s about “morality” doesn’t quite get it. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's a major award - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/its-a-major-award.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's a major award - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Catholic Spotlight is a series of podcasts sponsored by the Catholic Company. 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