Years ago just before Christmas, I heard a beloved Seminary Professor make a provocative and powerful statement. He said, “The Christmas Octave is when the Church decides to pour blood into our egg nog.” That image has stuck in my…
Christmas, even in the neo-pagan anti-culture of the Western World, like a gargantuan, forgotten cenotaph covered in overgrowth, remains the premier annual feast to most post-Christians, for whom the ancient liturgical year has become a distant memory. It is intrinsically…
To assert that celibacy is a discipline praised by both the Lord (Matthew 19:12) and his Apostles (1 Corinthians 7:32-34) is Biblically indisputable. Additionally we have the implication in the Bible that, although some of the Apostles may have been…
Recently I found myself working most of the day at a Church Food Pantry, which is always an eye opening experience. It reminds me of how lucky I am, and also how so many “ordinary” people lack some of the…
This weekend, on the XVII Sunday of Ordinary Time, now after many years of hearing the readings of the Liturgical Year, it always amazes me how much the readings and their lessons (along with those of the Breviary) have informed…
Michaelangelo’s “Last Judgment”, with Christ judging the world. “I was a prisoner, and you visited me.” I know an old, wise man who often says regarding modern Law Enforcement that we “do not have a justice system, but a penal…
From the XIII Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B So many of us are status conscious, and that necessarily isn’t a bad thing. We want to send our kids to good schools, so they can have a good career, and…
First, let me apologize to any readers that I have not been putting out many posts, mostly because I am in the middle of a move. We will see if I am able to resume fully in about two or…
The Universal Experience of Death and Our Response In the experience of the average Parish Priest in the West, I suspect that after the Daily or Sunday Mass, the most common Mass celebrated by a Priest is that for a…
Today the Church reaches Mid-Lent, traditionally called “Laetare Sunday”, from the Introit of the Mass, Rejoice Jerusalem/Laetare Jerusalem. Having started the season of Lent largely reflecting on Biblical themes of temptation, penance, repentance, fasting, almsgiving and prayer, our attention will turn…