Ahhh! The Easter season. I love it: buds peeking their way through the cold damp ground, longer days, and milder weather. It’s almost as if everyone comes out of hiding from the dark winter and into the brighter days of…
But Who’s My Brother?!?
A Winning Team: Pope Francis and Our Lady
What is the one thing that Pope Francis is rarely without? Hint: He always brings it with him and is seen wearing it in the majority of his pictures. Give up? It’s his smile. Do an Internet search of images…
Turning the Other Cheek
But I say this to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly. To anyone who slaps you on one cheek, present…
Romance Has No Reason
I don’t believe the cultural attack on marriage is an accident. While we are making progress as a culture in some areas like respect for unborn life, there is little question that we are losing the importance of marriage. There…
Mandatory – Be Gone
A list of synonyms for the word mandatory includes compulsory, obligatory, requisite, binding, fixed, and set. It is a strong word, not to be used lightly and certainly not to be used unless it is accurate describing something. I propose…
From Doubt to Faith: The Lesson of Thomas
Readings for April 12, 2015: Second Sunday of Easter, Sunday of Divine Mercy We don’t know where Thomas was. All we know is that he missed it. All the others were huddling together behind locked doors, hoping that the authorities…
You Can’t Win
You can’t win. You can’t. But that’s nothing new. Jesus and John faced the same problem: “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped…
From Hub to Heart, via Medjugorje
At the Catholic Men’s Conference in Boston in 2010, Andy LaVallee met Jim Caviezel, not knowing he portrayed Jesus in The Passion of Christ. Jim dared Andy to go with him to Medjugorje, an obscure, poor village in Croatia. For…
Making Sense of Institutional Evangelization
A lot of “New Evangelization” talk gravitates towards questions of how to re-evangelized those who may be baptized but not practicing, those in our neighborhoods who’ve never even heard the Christian Gospel proclaimed at all, or even those who are…
Roll the Stone Away!
Readings for April 6, 2015: Easter Sunday The serpent’s bite was a deadly one. The venom had worked its way deep into the heart of the entire human race, doing its gruesome work. The anti-venom was unavailable until He appeared….