Gabe Huck

Book review: We began living in Syria in 2005 and often visited Deir Mar Musa al Habashi, the monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, where we came to know Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall'Oglio.

Daily Easter Reflections: Should the Gospel we profess and the liturgy we do raise in us some great unease with the political, economic, military and environmental conditions that are our responsibility as U.S. citizens and residents? If so, how do we grapple with the apparent absence of such unease in our churches?

Daily Easter Reflections: Why, day by day, in church and at work and as citizens and as human beings, why are we so often and so thoroughly being choked, our breath cut off, by what is petty, what is dull, what never sees to the depths of things, what never rises and sees how truths converge? 

Daily Easter Reflections: Years ago, but not all that many, there were two church organists who loved the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, for it brought a twinkle to their eyes. One of them, playing during the collection, would subtly work in just a little bit of a then-popular song whose words included "Up, up and away, in my beautiful balloon."

Daily Easter Reflections: We talk, we read, we write, we listen. We surround ourselves with print on paper and walls and screens. We surround ourselves with sounds-making-words that convey meaning and images. 

Daily Easter Reflections: "Bursting forth from Pharaoh’s prison, Alleluia! Let us sing! Alleluia! Christ is risen. Alleluia to our king!"

Daily Lenten Reflections: Tonight we are simply ending the time of vigiling, praying and fasting that we began on Thursday night when we washed each other's feet here in this place, the vigiling and praying and fasting that continued through Good Friday when we came forward one by one to kiss or embrace or bow or kneel before the image of the cross.

Daily Lenten Reflections: This washing of one another's feet is a vision of how people might live together. We do it but once a year; we want to get to that night between Saturday and Sunday with its fire, its song, its scriptures, its font of baptism and its table of bread and wine.

Daily Lenten Reflections: When the people of Damascus, Christian or Muslim or otherwise, think of Holy Week, they think of marching bands. In this city, there are at least a dozen varieties of Christian communities, all of them clustered around the "Christian Quarter" of the Old City.

Daily Lenten Reflections: The "original" sin is not primarily that humanity "disobeyed" God; the sin is that we ceased to be hungry for God and for God alone, ceased to see our whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God. 

Daily Lenten Reflections: Can Lent be Lent for us in these times unless we make such lamentation integral to our lives and ritual? We rehearse our baptized responsibility to intercede for the world God so loves, and to lament with and for that world, ourselves included.

Daily Lenten Reflections: Should the Gospel we profess and the liturgy we do raise in us some great unease with the political, economic, military and environmental conditions that are our responsibility as U.S. citizens and residents?

Daily Lenten Reflections: Should the Gospel we profess and the liturgy we do raise in us some great unease with the political, economic, military and environmental conditions that are our responsibility as U.S. citizens and residents? 

Daily Lenten Reflections: Lent is about the deed we are going to do when Lent is over. When Lent has ended on Holy Thursday afternoon, we enter into three days — Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday — that are the very heart of our year and of our lives.

Daily Lenten Reflections: The sine qua non of a community’s rituals — little ones and enormous ones — are the way they belong to all present.