Baptism is a vocation, a call to be united to the life of the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Confirmation is a vocation to go out and witness to that life. But there are many ways of living out the vocation of baptism and confirmation. Two...
“Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?” Think of that image: a burning heart. What is that fire? It can certainly be the fire of love. It can also be the fire enkindled when you begin...
St. Matthew gives us the most dramatic account of the Resurrection of all the four Gospels: the violent earthquake, the angel descending from heaven, etc.. But the basic fact remains the same: the Lord has risen from the dead. The Lord is truly risen. This historical fact, faithfully recounted and...
Jesus knew that he would be crucified. He told his disciples as much a number of times in the three years they were together, though they did not want to hear it. He also knew why he would be crucified. At one level his death was plotted by the Jewish...
To know what true love is, only the Truth Himself can tell us. And that is what these three holy days which have just begun, the sacred Triduum, are all about. Each of these days tells us what the three mains forms of love are. They reveal love’s style, they...
This page from the Gospel of St. John can’t not fill us with immense hope. Over the past ten days or so, here in our parish, no less than four families and all their relatives and friends, have been going through the sadness and distress caused by the death of...
The first thing God created was light. “Let there be light.” But the book of Genesis says that before there was light, “the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Our Gospel reading today evokes these same things. Jesus...
“He told me all I have ever done.” These are the words the Samaritan woman spoke to her fellow villagers. She had had five husbands and Jesus surprised, astonished and possibly shocked her by telling her that he knew. Yet, that knowledge of his drew her, not to a fit...
In seminary, when I was being taught some methods on how to pray, one of them involved the use of the senses. The idea was to apply your senses to the scene from the Gospel you were reading. I was doing that in preparing to speak to you today and...
“Be off, Satan!” Adam and Eve were tempted to do wrong and did it. Christ was tempted to do wrong, but did right. We can therefore be tempted either to do wrong or to do right, although we rarely say, “I’m tempted to do the right thing.” Of course, you...
