Fundraising for local charities and dancing with stars years ago, I was paired with professionals to move and groove to R.E.M.’s hit song Losing My Religion. Though the southern band explained the song’s title as comparative to losing grip of one’s situation, like when Jesus lost His temperament with the Pharisees or drove moneychangers from […]
Unlike most liturgical Sundays that are identified by numbers (Second Sunday of Advent, Fifth Sunday of Easter, Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time…), the five Sundays this June are identified by names: Ascension, Pentecost, Holy Trinity, Corpus Christi, and Peter & Paul. These feasts help us focus on a concept or event that strengthens our relationship […]
Motivational speaker and acclaimed writer, David Brooks, in his book The Second Mountain, articulated four “commitments” that make a person’s life meaningful and fulfilling. The four foundations have to do with home life, work life, social life, and philosophy of life. In discussing them with various people and groups I know they ring true; though it […]
Ninety-eight years ago, Max Ehrmann wrote the prose poem Desiderata. It begins with the memorable and soothing line, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.” This pensive starter gives contrast to the noisy chaos of our hasty world in which it is so easy for us […]
A prayer that priests and other religious pray in the cycle of our daily Liturgy of the Hours (or Office/Breviary) reads: “Lord, you renew the face of the earth announcing unforetold wonders. Through a virgin, you brought forth new birth to our world; through your miracles, new power; through your suffering, new patience; in your […]
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which represents the church’s moral and political views, seems to be at an impasse with the Trump Administration regarding issues of immigration. The irreconcilable differences are rooted in The Catholic Social Teachings, specifically the dignity of personhood that calls us to look at illegal aliens and see, […]
Twentieth century clergyman and author Norman Vincent Peale made famous his Parable of the Prenatal Baby which he first told to a wealthy and powerful aging man who asked him about the mysterious afterlife. He told it not to explain an unknowable reality but to offer us enlightenment through faith, intelligence, and common sense; he […]
Within the Saint Therese Little Flower faith community, parishioners sometimes refer to common Catholics as “pips” or “people in pews.” Many pips are interested in what lies ahead for parishes, worldwide and local, since the election of Pope Leo XIV. There is much speculation based on descriptors of the new pontiff: unifier, multi-cultural, missionary-minded, Christ-centered, […]
As we approach Good Shepherd Sunday, the Catholic Church welcomes our new spiritual father, successor to Peter, and universal shepherd, Pope Leo XIV. Though his predecessor, Francis, was the first American pope and one who reached out to and established the church’s significance in the eastern hemisphere like none before him, Leo is the first […]
The French term for hospital, Hotel-Dieu, translates into English as “House of God.” Usually sponsored by religious groups and often operated by nuns or representatives of the church, hospitals served originally as places of care for the suffering, triage centers for those wounded in battle, and hospice facilities that offer solace and peace to the […]
UPON THIS ROCK 