I believe this feast is unique in the liturgical life of the Church. Most saints have their dies natalis – actually the day of their birth into heaven – commemorated in the liturgical calendar. A few: Mary, Saint John the Baptist, and…
By the time Martha looked upstream the dove was just a mote in the sky and the words “my beloved” were trickling off beyond perception like a rose petal on the face of the River Jordan. What it was exactly,…
Miss America! ¡Qué guapa! I love what you’ve done with beauty. You took its pure, lily-white supremacist notion and introduced it to some salutary sunshine. Your body is as shapely as three contiguous continents. Your hair is charcoal cornsilk. From…
I don’t often express a disagreement with those who prepare liturgical texts, but on this feast I do. Saying that Christ is the King of the Universe, at least to me, makes it sound like Star Wars – that title…
It became so natural, but when Saint John Paul II was elected as Pope in Rome in 1978, it was almost beyond comprehension. He was the first non-Italian in centuries to become bishop of Rome. But it took almost no…
Somewhere among my memorabilia files is a little reminder note written by a 7-year old me. It reads: “Tell mom to take me to see the poope.” (That’s not a typo. Spelling has never been my strength). I had been…
You ember-eating, living thuribles coughing a smoke heavy and holy into the face of a wilderness that turns away with twisted smile, you aren’t nearly as alone as the cold and failure would beat you into believing. There are many…
The celebration of the Birth of Mary seems to be eminently logical, as it is nine months after December 8, the commemoration of the day Mary was conceived by Saints Anne and Joachim. There is one slight problem, since the…
In the history of famous Christian conversions, that of St. Augustine stands second only to St. Paul’s in stature. In both cases, Christianity would have looked very different today had either one of these men not turned off the path…
To make a courageous choice that leads to personal loss is difficult. Most of us choose self-protection over self sacrifice. To make such a choice when that loss is one’s very life is beyond difficult. But, as Christians, we are…