Listen to this inspiring talk by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen about the importance of adoration.
In 451 bishops from throughout the Mediterranean traveled to Constantinople for the Council of Chalcedon. At the council Marcian, the emperor of Constantinople, asked the patriarch of Jerusalem if he would provide the emperor with some relics of Mary, the Mother of God. The emperor wanted to enshrine the relics in Constantinople. The patriarch had to explain to the emperor that no such relics existed.
In the mid-1980s, I taught a Business Law class at Illinois Central College (ICC). One of the areas of law that was covered in the class was contract law. I taught my students that there are four conditions that are necessary in order for a contract (or agreement) to be legally valid and binding. The four conditions are:
Last month, there was an event that caused me to stop what I was doing and think back to 1989. That was the year I purchased The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a book written by Stephen Covey. The event that caused me to stop and think about Covey’s book was a report on the news that he had passed away. Covey died on July 16, 2012, at the age of 79. At the time of his death, he was a professor at the John Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.
Fr. David and I periodically meet to discuss the status of the perpetual adoration program at St. Philomena. At a recent meeting, the topic of my weekly Adoration Letter came up. We talked about the fact that, on occasion, a parishioner complains about the content of an article or that an opinion expressed in one of the articles may be interpreted by others as the opinion of the staff at St. Philomena.
During the years I was growing up, every Wednesday evening my parents went out together for a “date night.” A date night consisted of a trip to one of the local restaurants (usually Hunt’s or Lum’s) for a sandwich and then to the Eagle food store to buy groceries for our family.
After arriving home on a Thursday evening a couple of months ago, I learned that three of my daughters – Mary (20), Christine (18), and Teresa (16) – were planning on going to the midnight showing of the newly released movie The Avengers. When I found out about their plans, I announced, “You’re not going tonight. You can wait one more day and go tomorrow at a more reasonable time.”
I owe my patriotism and my love of country primarily to the two men who had the most influence on me while I was growing up – my dad, Carl Williams, and my grandfather, Tom Williams.
On June 13, 2012, Justin Siebenthal, a 21-year-old East Peoria, Illinois, man was shot and killed inside his home by two men. The crime took place in the middle of the night. Siebenthal opened his front door thinking that a man he had talked to earlier about buying some drugs was going to be standing outside the door. Instead, there were two men armed with handguns.
Although I grew up watching heroes such as Superman, Batman, and the Lone Ranger on television, my very first heroes were my dad, Carl Williams, and my grand-father, Tom Williams. My grandfather lived next door to my parents and was of Lebanese descent. In Lebanese, a grandfather is referred to as “Jidu.” That’s what all his grandchildren called him: “Jidu.”
