The feast of the Holy Family we celebrate today is actually a part of the celebration of the Incarnation of Jesus. The Savior took flesh of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and even though this miracle bypassed natural means of conception it could not bypass...
Some close friends of mine are a happily married couple who told me one day their marriage was nothing like they had planned. They listed all the ways in which their plans had failed to materialize and I remember well how we all laughed. Then they listed the ways God...
Today is Gaudete Sunday; Joy Sunday! It is a day for considering all that we as Christians can rejoice about and, of course, when all is said and done our greatest joy, our only final joy, is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What will bring you joy and happiness?...
The message from today’s readings tells us to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus. With the approaching of Christmas, the day when we will be celebrating the incarnation of God on earth, we are reminded how the people of the Old Testament waited for the arrival...
The crisis of today is the refusal to believe in moral absolutes. We believe that truth cannot be known with certainty. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t! Today we no longer have truth, we have opinions. And the question arises: How can one be a Christian who is a...
Today as we celebrate our national feast of Thanksgiving, the Church has us ponder in the Gospel story of the ten lepers. All ten were cured of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink, that had made them the worst of...
I want to begin today by noting that in Jesus’ time among us a talent was a huge amount of money. The coin denominated as a talent was very valuable indeed. For us today we think of talents not as money but as special personal gifts we may have. We...
In our first reading from the book of Wisdom God invites Solomon to ask for any gift he wants – and he asks for wisdom! – Wisdom to run his kingdom. Would you have thought of asking for something like that? Lord, I need good looks, I want to be...
Today’s Holy Day, the Feast of All Saints, raises up before our eyes not just the famous canonized saints recognized in the Church’s yearly calendar, but all those other holy ones whose lives were dedicated to God and the establishment of His Kingdom here on earth. And who are among...
There are some people for whom we simply cannot feel any love at all, or so we tell ourselves. Too much resentment, too much distrust… some people are just “too much” for us. Take, for instance, a relative who is arrogant, self-centered, opinionated, and who is totally given over to...