Common question among churchgoers after Ash Wednesday. I’m a vegetarian, so I can’t give up meat. Of course, there’s a lot more I could “sacrifice.” Years ago, however, I thought about what to give up—daily wine with dinner, desserts, etc. But every way I turned this in my thoughts, it just came out silly. Foregoing ice [...]
The recent passage of New York’s radical new law permitting abortion up until the beginning of labor was shocking, but more shocking still were the cheers of the lawmakers when the governor signed the bill into law. Even people who were barely lukewarm in their pro-life sentiments were horrified by such an enthusiastic reception of the [...]
Last Sunday on the way out of church I noticed a lady sitting at the end of the pew on the far side of the church, turned slightly away from the departing crowd. Clearly, she didn’t want to be noticed. She was weeping. I sat down on the other end of the pew, nearest the departing [...]
So much is covered by the over-arching metaphor of expansion and contraction. It is the activity of our lungs as we breathe, of our heartbeat, and some physicists say it is the constant activity of the universe. But it’s more than merely physical activity. It’s the living of our lives, our relationships, and all our endeavors. [...]
Last night I went to a visitation and vespers service for a priest emeritus whom I have known for more than twenty years. I wept. And it seemed that I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop myself. We were not close, and, at 94, he’d been beyond ordinary social interaction for some time. Yet his departure awoke [...]
This past Saturday morning, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, I awoke to see at the back of my garden a grotto style fountain with a statue of Our Lady of Grace in the upper niche. Water has flowed from her feet into the basin below for the past 20 years or more. The [...]
A writer friend wrote me: “Never have I had such a compulsion to speak—shout, even. Yet, never have I been so utterly mute, prostrate with grief. I want to scream, but there is nothing I can say.” Though I’m not a blogger, as she is, burdened by an expectation from her readers to say something in [...]
The new crisis is not news, nor is it new. Archbishop Viganó is not a saint, but he is a hero. He knew he would be calumniated, and according to the credible journalist he spoke to, he feared for his life, not just his reputation—which, of course, will be annihilated. The guns aimed at him now might [...]
Recently our young Polish priest gave a homily about love. I have to say that whenever someone wants to talk authoritatively about love, I tune out. Too often, it seems that it’s the people who talk most about love who know least about it. Love is like dancing or swimming. It’s learned only by doing. You [...]
As Christ Incarnated restores to human dignity the first man Adam, so Pentecost restores human unity to the disruption of Babel. Language, that means and measure of human communion, was the undoing of humanity at Babel. Again, just as in Eden, the motive was the aspiration of humankind to its own deification. The response from Heaven [...]
