There are several church documents that provide guidelines for Church Musicians. For a general guide on liturgy and music you can refer to Chapter VI of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. More recently, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published Sing to the Lord, a document that provides musical guidelines for parishes and Church Musicians. For more information about these documents and other guidelines see the National Association of Pastoral Musicians website. There you can find all the necessary materials for planning and selecting music for worship.…

We don’t actually know why they came to find him. This story shows up in three places (Mark 3: 31-35, Luke 8:19-21, and Matthew 12:46-50), and none of the evangelists mentions the reason why Mary and Jesus’ brothers (often understood to be half-brothers or cousins; see the New American Bible footnote for Mark 6:3) are seeking him out. Mark’s version does hint at some worry on the part of Jesus’ family; just prior to this passage, in 3:21, some unnamed relatives of Jesus come with the intent to “seize him” and they say, “He is out of his mind.” This raises the possibility that perhaps Mary and the other relatives were concerned about Jesus’ welfare.
Ultimately, though, when it comes to answering…

Lectors should be properly trained to not only READ the Word of God, but also PROCLAIM the Word of God…and a few simple steps can prepare your lectors for proclaiming the Word from the highest hill-tops!
The simplest way to prepare Lectors for worship is to give them the scripture reading in advance. Scheduling lectors so they know when and what they are reading is a great first step for an effective lector ministry. Second, it is helpful for readers to have a Lector Workbook along with their assigned scripture reading. This workbook provides the Sunday readings, a pronunciation guide and often a commentary on the readings for the lector. Such Lector guides are available through Liturgy Training Publications.…

The ceremony you saw was one of the rites associated with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). This is a process of catechetical and spiritual preparation, following the practices of the early Church, for adults who wish to become Catholic. Various rites mark the stages of the journey, from the time when a person declares his or her desire to enter the Catholic Church to the culminating moment of the sacraments of initiation. Shortly before their initiation, candidates are sent from their local parishes (in the ceremony that you saw) to the bishop, who presides at the Rite of Election. The bishop asks the candidates to declare their faith in Christ and asks the community to affirm their readiness to…

Question: What is the oldest known manuscript of the Bible that has been found to date? Any new recent discoveries that I might not know about?
The oldest known manuscripts of the entire Christian Bible are the Codex Sinaiticus, so named because it was found at a monastery on Mt. Sinai, and the Codex Vaticanus, which takes its name from the Vatican library where it now resides. Both are dated to approximately 350 A.D.
Biblical scholars have discovered older fragments of the Bible of varying size and condition. The oldest known fragment we have from the New Testament is a tiny section of John’s gospel that contains part of only seven lines in Greek. This fragment is dated to about 125 AD.
Probably the most exciting…

The way in which the Church translated the Roman Missal (the book that contains all the prayers for Mass) has changed. When translating a text, you can use two different approaches: dynamic equivalence or formal equivalence. Dynamic equivalence translates the original text based on meaning or spirit of the text. Formal equivalence is a literal word-for-word translation of the original text. In our current Roman Missal (published in 1975), the Church used dynamic equivalence to translate the Latin Roman Missal into English. In 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship published Liturgiam Authenticum. This document calls for a formal (or literal) translation of the Latin Missal. In the past several years,…

John’s Gospel has no birth or infancy narratives, but it does have two key stories that highlight Mary’s involvement in Jesus’ adult life. The first is the Wedding at Cana, when Mary tells Jesus that there is no more wine.
Though he responds by saying, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come,” (John 2:4), Mary confidently tells the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2:5) Jesus then performs his first miracle and turns the water into wine. This story reveals a lot about Mary. For one thing, it shows that she had tremendous faith in her son’s ability to fix the problem at hand. She is confident that he can save the party, even though she has never seen him perform a miracle…

You won’t find this quote in the Bible, but it is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Jesus. The original quote is from St. Augustine, a famous bishop of Hippo in northern Africa and an influential Catholic theologian who died in 430 A.D.
Mohandas Gandhi borrowed the idea and further popularized it when he wrote in his 1929 autobiography to “hate the sin and not the sinner.” The moral teaching behind the variations of the quote suggests that all humans are deserving of love, regardless of their sometimes sinful behavior. In cases of grievous or heinous sin, loving the sinner while hating the sin can be supremely difficult. Yet Jesus promoted the same with his teaching to “Love your enemies and pray for those…

Mary MacKillop, the co-founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), is one of our most recently canonized saints and was the first Australian to be canonized. She lived from 1842-1909. As a teacher and dedicated servant of the poorest of the poor, she led her sisters to found schools, orphanages, homes for the aged and various other ministries. In the publicity leading up to her canonization, one aspect of her career received intense attention: During a conflict with the local bishop, who tried to change the Josephites’ constitutions after the order helped to remove a priest suspected of pedophilia, she was briefly excommunicated for insubordination. Ultimately…

Mormons go on mission ostensibly for the same reason that Catholics go on mission, albeit for a very different version of the Gospel. In their Book of Doctrine and Covenants they claim that Jesus said, “proclaim my gospel from land to land, and from city to city… bear testimony in every place, unto every people” (Doctrine and Covenants 66:5,7). They will also refer to the biblical mandate of Mark 16:15-16 “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.” According to their own website, there are currently 52,000 Mormon missionaries serving in 350 missions around the world.
While it is not…

Luke’s Gospel has much more information about Mary than the other three do. He gives us a very intimate portrait of her, showing her initial surprise at the arrival of the angel Gabriel and her subsequent acceptance of her role as the Mother of the Savior. Luke also includes the story of Mary visiting her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, which gives us a rare glimpse into female friendship and familial support, and he alone has the beautiful “Magnificat,” Mary’s hymn of praise. In fact, Luke is the Gospel that features the most direct quotations from Mary herself. Luke also includes stories showing Mary’s life as a young mother: the Presentation in the Temple, when Simeon warns her of the suffering that she…

The Catholic Church teaches that the Bible is a literary product of its time which must be read with due attention to its literary genre (Vatican II).
Some books of the Bible were written as “historical narrative” and attempted to preserve some basic historical happenings, for example the rise of the Israelite kingdom and the building of the Temple under Solomon’s leadership in I Kings. However, many books were never meant to be read as history in the sense that we think of history today. Books of the Bible include poetry, legends, proverbs, songs, apocalyptic writing, fables, parables, etc. that attempt to convey truth without suggesting that it is accurate historical fact. For example, in the Psalms…

Sure, although it’s not all that “secret.” You can ask any Mormon about it. The “garment” as it is commonly called, is a symbol of their dedication to God and the religious promises that they have made. It is conferred, somewhat like a religious habit, in a temple ceremony known as the “temple endowment.” This is when they are instructed in what the garment is and what is stands for and how it should be cared for. The garment is worn under other clothing next to the skin, reminiscent of the first garments that God made for Adam and Eve as they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Thus, for many Mormons, their garment takes the place of regular underwear. The garments are made at official LDS clothing centers…

Good for you for taking your Lenten fast so seriously! During the season of Lent, the practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving are meant to help us turn away from whatever has derailed us along the way and turn back to God. By giving up dessert for Lent, you are fasting from something that gives you pleasure and offering that sacrifice to God. If skipping dessert has been hard for you, it’s probably a sign that your sacrifice is working. Your effort in keeping to the fast is a concrete step that helps you to turn to God.
Is slipping from your Lenten fast a serious sin that requires you to go to confession? No. Giving up something for Lent (if it’s not something that’s a sin in itself) is a discipline that you set for…

Of the four Gospels, Mark has the least information about Mary. There is no infancy narrative in Mark, so we hear nothing about Jesus’ birth or early life. The first reference to Mary is in Mark 3:31-35, when Jesus’ family (including his mom) come looking for him while he is preaching. Mary is later mentioned by name when Jesus returns to Nazareth and the people refer to him as “the son of Mary” (6:3). Beyond that, though, Mark says nothing about Jesus’ mother, focusing instead on Jesus’ adult life and his ministry.…

Let’s imagine that your friend were sober and broke your phone by sheer accident. Should she feel obligated to compensate you? Yes. She is responsible for the damage, much the way one would be responsible for breaking a dish in a china shop. The fact that she was drunk implies negligence and increases her responsibility, rather than mitigating it. (Consider how a drunk driver who causes an accident incurs greater penalties than a sober driver.) So of course she should apologize for what happened and pay for the repair of your phone. It is reasonable for you to expect that.
As far as whether or not you should demand payment, ask yourself about the nature of your relationship. Is it a strong friendship, which will weather…

In the biblical notion of time, one day ends and another begins at sundown, rather than at 12:00 midnight. (Recall that “evening came, and morning followed – the first [etc.] day” in the creation story of Genesis 1:1-2:4a.) Thus when evening falls on Saturday, according to the understanding of the Church, Sunday begins. When you attend a Saturday evening mass, you hear the lectionary readings and prayers for Sunday; participating in this mass “counts” to fulfill your Sunday obligation. Anticipating the Sunday mass – celebrating it on Saturday evening – came about in the latter half of the 20th century, as the rhythms of modern life made attending Sunday morning mass increasingly difficult for…

The two are very different. In Latter Day Saint (“Mormon”) polity, a ward denotes a large local congregation. Smaller local congregations are called branches. A ward is presided over by a “bishop,” a position which is analogous to a pastor in most other denominations.
A temple is different in that while it may also be used for worship and prayer, its primary purpose is to be a “house of the Lord” wherein the rituals or “ordinances” of the religion take place. This includes baptisms, weddings, and other important rituals for both the living and the dead. Unfortunately, for reasons of ritual purity, non-Mormons may not visit the inside of a temple once it has been dedicated. However, if you get a chance…

In my church, there’s a chapel dedicated to Mary. Above the altar is a very traditional white statue of Mary, holding her hands in prayer, her eyes downcast. But on the wall above that statue, there is a large woodcarving of Mary in a totally different pose: her arms outstretched, looking straight at you, strong and determined. It’s easy to miss that triumphant Mary, because unless the light is on above the altar, she’s very hard to see. In fact, I attended the church for a few years before I even realized that woodcarving was there.
I share this story because I’ve come to think of these two images as a great metaphor for how we see Mary.
Certainly, it’s tempting to think of Mary as being passive, probably due…

Abraham is considered our father in faith by three major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So, let’s begin there. Abraham (or Abram, as we first encounter him) is a central figure in the story of salvation history. It is through him that God established his covenant. That’s another way of saying that it is through Abraham that God entered into a very sacred relationship with humankind. In order for God to determine Abraham’s ability to trust, Gn 22 tells us that God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Recall that this ancient story (literally thousands of years old) comes from a time when human sacrifice (and polytheism – belief in many gods) was common. What strikes us as so utterly…