Morning Briefings

Saint Ignatius Loyola advises that if I’m having problems believing or if I know in my head the right thing to do but my heart is resisting, then I should act as if I do believe until I do. Oftentimes, when my faith wavers, I take great consolation in this advice. This is why the church values ritual so much. It allows my body and my voice to move me through the barren deserts of my spiritual life.

– Mark E. Thibodeaux
God, I Have Issues

Cash-squeezed privately held companies are facing another threat in this struggling economy: rising employee fraud. Employees engage in check forgery, petty-cash theft; Managers sometimes mistakenly blame lower sales instead of foul play.

– Simona Covel, The Wall Street Journal
Small Businesses Face More Fraud in Downturn

We are walking in a ticker tape parade. That’s all that’s going on. Some pieces of confetti read ‘great calves,’ some ‘chronic sinus,’ some ‘no noticeable hair loss,’ some ‘multiple sclerosis,’ and some ‘third finger amputation.’ Don’t judge your neighbor by what pieces fall on his or her shoulder. Don’t think you are cursed or ‘blessed’ by what pieces fall on yours.

– Hugh Prather
Spiritual Notes to Myself: Essential Wisdom for the 21st Century

Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.

– Hebrews 13:2

Pope John Paul II went to daring lengths in asserting that the modern business process ‘throws practical light on a truth about the person which Christianity has constantly affirmed.’ That truth is this: the Creator made the human person to work in community and to cooperate freely with other persons for the sake of the other person.

– Michael Novak
Business as a Calling

It’s worth recalling that Ash Wednesday is invariably the Midtown landmark’s busiest day of the year; upwards of 60,000 workers and tourists annually flood St. Patrick’s Cathedral to receive the burnt palm symbolizing man’s mortality and need for redemption.

– Rocco Palmo
Whispers in the Loggia

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the last hurrah before the Catholic season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It also has links to the Christmas season through the period known as Carnival.

– Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras,
AmericanCatholic.org

In 1790, George Washington exchanged letters with Moses Seixas, the warden of the Hebrew Congregation and who praised the newly formed United Stated for ‘affording all liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship.” In reply, Washington wrote that U.S. citizens had a ‘right to applaud themselves’ for setting an example of an ‘enlarged and liberal policy’ that enshrined freedom of conscience. He added that the ability of members of one faith to seek the benefit of all Americans is the foundation of America’s civic strength.

– Archbishop Donald Wuerl, Charles Colson and Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik, The Wall Street Journal
United We Stand for Religious Freedom

Prayer, rooted firmly in where-we-are, yet striving for where-we-long-to-be, is the expression of God’s call to us–and our response.

– Margaret Silf
Close to the Heart: A Practical Approach to Personal Prayer

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

– Hebrews 11:1