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Father Harry Hagan

happy priests

Happy to Be a Priest!

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In 2018, I decided to make an exhibit of paintings called “Happy to Be a Priest.” Just as the fall semester began, the media became filled with Pennsylvania’s report on the sexual abuse by priests. I felt particularly bad for new seminarians. You come to a seminary because you feel that being a priest is Read More
Lamb of God

Mercy’s Many Meanings

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Mercy flows like a great river out of the Old Testament into the New, where it overflows its banks. The word “mercy” appears in the New American Bible Revised Edition (2010) 296 times in the Old Testament and another 43 times in the New Testament. Like the Mississippi, which gathers its water from various tributaries, Read More
sheep

Exploring Psalm 23

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Literary language is sticky in a way that ordinary language is not. Although most priests do not think of their homilies as literary language, a homily, at least a good homily, is a sticky text. It can stick to different people in different ways and connect these people in a common experience. Psalm 23 is Read More
Psalms

Going Deeper into the Psalms

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People often expect the Book of Psalms to be “The Lord is my Shepherd” times 150. As those who read them regularly know, it is a crazy quilt of many different and unexpected voices, and not all of them happy. From time to time, we all need to remember that they were originally the prayers Read More