How do we find meaning in our lives? Is it a calculus of joy and sorrow, of victory and defeat? What is worth dying for? These deep questions lie just below the surface of our daily experience and can crop up when we least expect them. How we address these questions of meaning can make all the difference as to whether we are happy or sorrowful. How do I handle disappointment? How do I keep my elation over significant accomplishments in perspective? Maintaining balance in our lives as we strive to know and love God and our neighbor requires ongoing attention in the confidence that God is accompanying, guiding, and strengthening us. We will focus on Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes 12 to better understand what it means to “gain wisdom of heart” in the limited number of years granted to us on this earth.
November 22, presentation from 9am -1pm, Emmaus Hall, Saint John's University, Collegeville. Free event. Registration is required: [http://www.theologyday.com,]www.theologyday.com, 320-363-3560 or theologyday@csbsju.edu.
The Eucharist, Divinization, and the Regeneration of the World
Over the past two years the U.S. Catholic Church has celebrated a Eucharistic Revival culminating in the July 2024 National Eucharistic Congress. The Congress used the language of “renewal” to describe the power of the Eucharist for the Church. This same language was hallmark for Dom Virgil Michel, OSB in his theology of the Eucharist and the power of liturgy to renew and regenerate both the Church and the faithful. Michel understood himself as drawing deeply from the theological and liturgical tradition, including the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist and the nature of the Church. Join us for a day of reflection on Saint Thomas’s understanding of the Eucharist as a polyvalent sign, sacrament, and sacrifice which, when received through the liturgical lens of Virgil Michel, orients us to the ecclesial renewal envisioned by the Eucharistic Congress. We will examine the ways in which a retrieval of tradition demands personal and ecclesial growth into the full measure of the Body of Christ.
November 15, presentation from 9am -1pm, Emmaus Hall, Saint John's University, Collegeville. Free event. Synchronous. Registration is required: [http://www.theologyday.com,]www.theologyday.com, 320-363-3560 or theologyday@csbsju.edu.
Our faith tells us that with Christ’s resurrection comes the promise that one day we, too, like him shall bodily arise. Yet, this belief in the resurrection also leaves us Christians with many questions: What will we look like in the life to come? Will we recognize our loved ones, and will they recognize us? What kind of existence can we expect? What is the difference between immortality, reincarnation, and resurrected life? How do judgment of the dead, hell, purgatory, and heaven fit into the picture? Drawing from Scripture and Tradition, Fr Michael Patella will discuss the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead along with its implications for us now and in the hereafter.
September 26, presentation from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM, St. Bartholomew, Wayzata, MN. Free event. Registration is required: www.theologyday.com, 320-363-3560 or theologyday@csbsju.edu.