As mid-February takes us from Friday the Thirteenth to Valentine’s Day to the Lord’s Day to President’s Day to Mardi Gras to Ash Wednesday…each day might feel like an emotional rollercoaster with thoughts of human love, divine love, love of nation, celebration, bad luck, mortality, and the journey of life. This continual shifting of gears […]
Many of us in our sixties have a diminishing interest in company policies, work regulations, and job procedures. It is true in my case. At this stage, I can increasingly profess what I have always believed: that as a priest I can be a better instrument of the Lord without being a cogwheel of the […]
Outgoing United States Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was recently asked if he had any advice for his successor. He responded, “Don’t get pulled into the politics.” Regardless of one’s job or position in life, it is easy to get sucked into politics. It happens in church, school, health care, law firms, union jobs, family […]
The greatest happiness a person can experience, I think, is feeling close to God. It can also be overwhelming. Perhaps your concept of God is the one power that overcomes all other powers—or a love more powerful than either life or death. Maybe your sense of the unknowable entity that we call God is relief […]
This week, after two years and 107 episodes, I suspended weekly podcast recordings of Upon this Rock. The final chapter, which you can listen to here summarizes what I and the FSC (Farnan Spirituality Center) Board hoped to accomplish by joining the webcast market. There are many “godcasts” in the web world, an existence that […]
In The Two Popes, Benedict XVI and Francis watch a World Cup soccer match between their home countries, Germany and Argentina. That is fiction. In reality, however, Francis was a big fan. In his homily one World Youth Day he proclaimed, “Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup! He offers us the possibility […]
Just as our church has annual holy days to honor noble saints so does our nation have annual holidays to honor noble citizens. As we approach Martin Luther King Day (January 19), we’ll be reminded that it is not supposed to be a day off but a day on; some think of it not as […]
As we reach the twelfth day of Christmas, it is with a little sadness. Traditionally, it marks the time to turn off holiday lights and pack away decorations giving way to a new year and a return to ordinary life. The Bible’s final Christmas story is of the Magi, the three wise men who come […]
Each year, Catholics commemorate aspects of the early life of Jesus on various feasts during the Twelve Days of Christmas. Included therein is the Gospel story of His family’s flight into Egypt as immigrants who sought asylum from terror in their home country. In modern America, as well as many places around the globe, we […]
Wanda Bencke wrote the poem, “My First Christmas in Heaven,” after her child died on Christmas Day, 1997. It has helped millions of people who have lost loved ones during the holiday season to deal with sadness and emptiness that overtakes them while the world celebrates. Here are her words: I see the countless Christmas […]
UPON THIS ROCK 