The love of Christ can restore to spouses the joy of journeying together.Homily of Pope Francis
      Today’s first reading speaks to us of the people’s journey through the desert. We can imagine them as they walked, led by Moses; they were families: fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, grandparents, men and women of all ages, accompanied by many children and the elderly who struggled to make the journey. This people reminds us of the Church as she makes her way across the desert of the contemporary world, reminds us of the People of God composed, for the most part, of families. This makes us think of families, our families, walking along the paths of life with all their day to day experiences. It is impossible to quantify the strength and depth of humanity contained ...

“He filled my days with endless wonder”
“Because You know me, Lord. You know me more than myself.I am known by God, I am loved by God. He is the reason and meaning of my life” My name is Paula, I am a Brazilian missionary of Shalom Catholic Community living in Toronto for the past 4 years. When I look back I just can’t help being amazed by the love that has always surrounded me. I was raised Catholic but with no big faith. My family’s faith in God, as like many others, was connected with our success and well being.  If everything was going well then our relationship with God was well too, which meant that our church attendance went according to our mood. It was ...

Way of Peace: a path of witnesses
   “When the Risen Jesus appeared to the disciples in the cenacle, His first word was ‘Shalom’ (…) On that day, which is the day that the Lord has made for us, Jesus gave His disciples access to the way of Peace” (Letter to the Community) The Way of Peace is a formative itinerary to all prayer group members who are part of Shalom Work. The itinerary seeks to lead each person from a personal experience with Jesus Christ to the maturity of faith, the holiness of life and to help them to become true witnesses of the Gospel. It uses specific resources and contents. As the first members of Shalom Catholic Community started to deepen their spiritual life together, following the initial ...

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is also known as the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, which translates from Latin to “Body of Christ.” This feast originated in France in the midthirteenth century and was extended to the whole Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264. This feast is celebrated on the Thursday following the Trinity Sunday or, as in the USA, on the Sunday following that feast. This feast calls us to focus on two manifestations of the Body of Christ, the Holy Eucharist and the Church. The primary purpose of this feast is to focus our attention on the Eucharist. The opening prayer at Mass calls our attention to Jesus’ suffering and death and ...

How to Save Catholic Schools
It’s commencement season and tens of thousands of students are graduating from inner-city Catholic elementary schools. As decades of empirical research have shown, these kids have a better chance of successfully completing high school and college, and are better prepared to life-after-the-classroom, than their peers attending government schools. These inner-city Catholic schools are “public schools” in the best sense of the term; they’re open to the public (not just to Catholics), and they serve a genuine public interest, the empowerment of the youthful poor. There is ample research to demonstrate inner-city Catholic schools’ educational excellence, going back to the pioneering Coleman/Greeley studies in the 1970s. Now comes an even more comprehensive claim about the positive impact of these schools: for, ...

How I met Pope Francis
During the week before the Canonization of John Paul II and John XXIII, members of Shalom Community from many countries, took part in a pilgrimage to Rome where they shared an unforgettable experience of being part of the Holy Church’s family and also as one big family Shalom. Among many other pilgrims, some of them had the providential opportunity to meet Pope Francis face to face. Each of these encounters was a great joy to, as a Community, once again renew the love and fidelity for the Holy Father and to offer their lives in the service of Mother Church. This is how they met the Pope: Jullierme Oliveira, Celibate: “When he saw the name ‘shalom’ he promptly opened a ...

Justice and Mercy in Church Marriage Law
  In the run up to the October Synod of Bishops on marriage and the family, experts in Church marriage law came together in Rome this week to discuss the theme ‘Pastoral Marriage: Justice and Mercy, Antidotes Against ‘Laxism’ and ‘Rigorism’”. The study day at the University of the Holy Cross on May 22 aimed to show how justice and mercy are two sides of the same coin in the Church’s marriage law, which avoid “laxism” and “rigorism” in the pastoral approach to marriage. Professor Carlos Jose Errazuriz explained that very often mercy and law are perceived as “radically antithetical,” as two separate worlds that follow opposite logics: “kind, flexible and compassionate love on one hand, and a system of ...