MSI Press Blog

  I’ve stopped straightening the pictures on my walls. I used to try. Every few days I’d walk through the house, nudging frames back into alignment, restoring some sense of order. But living at the intersection of three faults means the earth has its own opinions. With nearly a small earthquake every day, the walls shift, the nails tilt, and the pictures lean again — each at its own angle, as if hung by a distracted curator. Eventually I surrendered. My walls are a gallery of slightly crooked memories, always in motion. On Sunday I noticed the same thing at the Mission. The Stations of the Cross — high up, heavy, and reverent — are also hanging at their own quiet angles. Not wildly askew, just… unsettled. A degree here, a tilt there. The kind of thing you only notice if you’ve lived long enough in a place where the ground never fully rests. No one bothers to straighten them. Why would they? The next tremor will undo the effort. The earth will have the last word. And somehow, t...

  Every Lent, the same question surfaces at dinner tables and parish gatherings: Why fish? Why does the Church ask Catholics to abstain from meat on Fridays, yet allow salmon, shrimp, or a tuna sandwich? The answer is older—and more meaningful—than most people realize. 1. It begins with Friday itself For Christians, Friday is the day of the Passion. It’s the weekly remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion. From the earliest centuries, believers marked Friday with some form of penance. Not dramatic gestures—just a small, steady act of self‑denial that kept the memory of Christ’s sacrifice close to daily life. 2. Meat meant feasting In the ancient Mediterranean world, meat wasn’t an everyday food. It was celebratory—weddings, festivals, victories, homecomings. To give up meat was to give up something rich, festive, and symbolic of abundance. Abstaining from it became a quiet way of stepping back from celebration and entering a posture of humility. Fish, by contrast, was ordinary food. It ...

  Last year, I decided to “do something meaningful” for Lent. I gave up red meat—simple enough, I thought. A small sacrifice, a gesture of discipline, and certainly nothing dramatic. Except it was dramatic. Red meat also happens to be the most absorbable form of iron, something my 75‑year‑old body apparently relies on more than I realized. My iron levels had been excellent— very excellent—just a few weeks earlier at my annual checkup. Then Lent arrived, I dutifully avoided red meat, and by Easter I was seriously anemic. It took six months of iron pills to climb back to normal. When I told my doctor what I had done, he didn’t prescribe a new medication or order a battery of tests. He simply said, with the kind of dry understatement only a seasoned physician can deliver: “Try commonsense.” And honestly, that may be the best Lenten advice I’ve ever received. Lent isn’t supposed to break us. It isn’t a contest in self‑punishment or a test of how cleverly we can deprive oursel...