I went into Arabia (Gal 1:17b). To Arabia, but to what part? To Mount Sinai, to the Red Sea, and to the city of Petra, a tour of salvation history, for God through his grace equipped Paul to be the Ambassador for Christ. To prepare himself, Paul spent forty days and forty nights in the desert […]
“Jesus is the greatest treasure in the universe. Jesus is better than anything—even the Super Bowl. If you have Jesus, it’s still awesome, whether you win or lose.” In a recent television interview, Rocky Seto, a coach for the Seattle Seahawks, the NFL champions of Super Bowl 48, expressed his belief that faith in Jesus […]
James “the brother of the Lord,” was a kinsman of Jesus. James became the first bishop of Jerusalem, a post he held from AD 40 until 62 when he was martyred under the persecution wrought by Herod Agrippa. The urgent work that James accomplished—he was a very productive leader—was to commission the Apostles to evangelize […]
FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME “Jesus is the greatest treasure in the universe. Jesus is better than anything—even the Super Bowl. If you have Jesus, it’s still awesome, whether you win or lose.” In a recent television interview, Rocky Seto, a coach for the Seattle Seahawks, the NFL champions of Super Bowl 48, expressed his […]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A lawyer, a cop, and a journalist enter Blessed John XXIII Seminary together. The lawyer ends up leaving to resume his practice but the cop and the journalist get ordained. Two out of three isn’t bad. You can take the man out of the law but you can’t […]
John the Baptist stood waist deep in the Jordan River. Thousands of faith-seekers came to be baptized by John for the forgiveness of sins. John believed that baptizing was his calling in life, the reason that he was born; indeed it was. Then one day Jesus arrived and the life and mission of the Baptist took on a […]
“We’re on a mission from God.” In the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, outlaw musicians Jake and Elwood Blues receive a divine commission to save the orphanage where they grew up by playing a one-night-only charity concert. Though Jake and Elwood could “use some churching up,” they are convinced that their plan will succeed because they saw […]
The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus—the school of the Gospel (CCC No. 533). My parents married in 1969. The day before the wedding my father got cold feet. In the hotel bar he sat drinking beer with the lawyer Tom Wall who counseled my father […]
The seven Catholic Epistles written by Saints James, Peter, John, and Jude form a small but integral portion of the New Testament. These letters have always interested me, ever since I learned about the epistolary genre of Scripture when I was a boy at Catholic school. I wonder how much attention these writings receive, written […]
Saint James the Just, one of Christianity’s early leaders, counsels readers across the ages to be patient but productive while waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises. The canonical epistle composed by James (or by his community of disciples) urges his audience—“The Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion”—to be patient and to continue to live holy […]
The season of Advent is about hope. That is the message to be taken from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans. His message of hope in Christ speaks to Christians throughout the millennia as it did to the Church at Rome c. AD 57. Back then the Roman Christians experienced persecution at the […]
Folk Rock Mention the names Peter, Paul, and Mary and for some the sixties folk trio comes to mind. On the night of the Last Supper, the Peter, Paul, and Mary of the New Testament weren’t singing “Puff the Magic Dragon,” or “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” They were singing, more or less in line, […]
On Wednesday, on the twelfth day of the twelfth month, in the year 2012, my parish and I celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As I write, there appears to be no significance to that factoid of the series of the twelves, though it was interesting enough to deserve a mention from the […]
In 1979 I received my First Communion and, as a communion gift, my first Bible, The Illustrated Children’s Bible. I cherished this present and the stories never left my memory, even after I lost the Bible, many years ago. The Word of God is eternal and omnipresent; it remains imprinted on our souls from our […]
Wednesday, November 21. I drove eleven hours through the Megalopolis of Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. It was the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest traveling day of the year in the U.S. Was I crazy? Maybe, but a daylong drive through stop-and-go traffic was what I wanted to help prepare for Advent. […]
“Absolute power,” Lord Acton wrote, “corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Good and bad can be a matter of degree, something that can be adjusted like the volume dial on a radio. If power is relative then that it means different things to different people, and its abuse becomes a matter […]
“Anyone who is so ‘progressive’ as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God” (2 John 9). Saint John the Apostle wrote of progressivism in his second letter 1,900 years ago. He directed his argument to the “lady elect and her children,” that is, to the community of believers who […]
“Receive the Word of God not as the word of men, but as it truly is: the Word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). Here it comes: a Bible-thumping sermon from a Spirit-filled preacher. On my most recent vacation, I drove through the Midwest—Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. I love radio, and as I traveled through the […]
The year was 1967. The Summer of Love. Across America young people adopted a new way of living: “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.” Love, or something like it, was in the air. But the counter-cultural movement of the Sixties caused much pain and confusion in the Roman Catholic Church. Today we suffer from the hangover: sex and drugs […]
First he heard the bells. Sunday afternoon, mid-1920s, Blessed Sacrament Parish, the Bronx. The altar boy rang them during Benediction and young Jerry Ryan, then age four, thought the beautiful sound was coming from the monstrance. Now a monsignor, Father Ryan has been a priest for sixty-seven years. At age seventy-five, he retired, as required […]
THE FACT IS … After college I landed a job as a reporter. “Meatball journalism”—four or five stories daily—was the quota. The editor, Joe D., took me under his wing. He said, “Kid, remember two things about newspapering. First, we are obliged to report the facts.” “What’s the second thing, Joe?” “Never let the facts […]
VESSELS OF GRACE In the 1970s Billy Joel wrote a hit song, “Only the Good Die Young.” The lyrics go like this (but I won’t sing them): “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints;/ the sinners are much more fun.” Sinners can be saints, and saints are sinners. A […]
Imagine this. A religious leader—his name is Jairus—has just received the worst news that any parent could hear: “Your daughter has died.” These words strike terror in his heart, are too real to deny. He turns to Jesus, who says, “Do not be afraid; just have faith” (Mk 5:36). Jesus knows what he’s all about. […]
I gave them your word and the world hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world (John 17:14). Today we observe World Communications Day, because communication is important to the life of the Church. In fact, we ARE in the business of communications: evangelization is the […]
