ST. JOSEPH: THE HIDDEN LIFE
Today we remember St. Joseph, in the year that Pope Francis has named as the Year of St. Joseph. Today, also, we begin a Year of the Family! When the Church honours a saint or honours families, it is one…
Category Feast Day
ST. PATRICK: A SAINT FOR A DANGEROUS WORLD
St. Patrick is one of those characters embraced by a secular world that has little interest and less knowledge about who he is and what he represents. There is much more to this spiritual hero whose death we celebrate on…
OUR LADY OF LOURDES AND WORLD DAY OF THE SICK
On World Day of the Sick last year, it was still business and life as usual in Canada. Remember that innocent time, before terms like “coronavirus,” “PPE” and “physical distancing” entered our daily vocabulary? We didn’t think twice about being…
CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL: IT SEEMS THAT EACH OF OUR CONVERSIONS MIGHT NOT MAKE A DIFFERENCE, BUT…..
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…
BAPTISM OF THE SAVIOUR/BIRTH OF AN ACTIVIST
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,…
OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
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…
CHRIST THE KING
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…
ST. JOHN PAUL II
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…
A SAINT FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE AND POOR SPELLERS
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…
BREBEUF AND COMPANIONS
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…