“I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul” Isaiah 61:10 “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for […]
Author: John DeCostanza
Trauma and the Death of the Body of Christ
Trauma and the Death of the Body of Christ[i] When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for […]
Being Neighbor in the Crisis of the Prevailing Paradigm: Accompanying Immigrants
It has been a difficult week in my ministry, but an excruciating week for those I love who are vulnerable and targeted because they are alternately documented in this age of Trump. I live and […]
Palm Sunday: Affirming the Value of All Living
The Palm Sunday liturgy produces a tension in us. The stories that we tell are really a process, a journey that we call Passion. We have Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the one hand […]
The Fruit of Holy Ground
When the LORD saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” God said, “Come no nearer! Remove […]
at a payphone at a gas station on Christmas Eve
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to […]
Accompanying Survivors: Holding Trauma and Doing It Well
For the past year, I have served my campus community as a deputy coordinator in the university’s process for adjudicating Title IX complaints. Sexual violence falls under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 […]
Embracing New Orleans: Story, Memory, and Recovery Ten Years On
(Editor’s Note: This post is the second of a series of three reflections on the 10-Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Be sure to check out the posts on Friday and Sunday by John Slattery and Lorraine Cuddeback.) We […]
To Praise, To Bless, To Preach: The Value of Dominic in the Age of Big Personality
I was walking along the beach with my five-year-old son. We walked past families with young children like ours who had inevitably pressed some adult into the forced labor of giant hole digging. I confess […]
Please do NOT pardon the interruption: Ezekiel, prophetic imagination, and mercy in contemporary social movements
“What the Church does with its creeds and its doctrinal tradition… it flattens out all the images and metaphors to make it fit into a nice formulation and then it’s deathly. So we have to […]
