Making the Best of Advent
Maybe like me you are being bombarded with helps to turn your Advent into a grace-filled season. Books, pamphlets, as well as podcasts, videos, and reflections emailed or sent to your site promise to accompany you during these three weeks. (We are cheated this year because the fourth week is only one day long.) My […]
Be Like Children
Last week a Sister who succumbed to Covid asked me to teach her PSR class of first graders at a nearby parish. Although I hadn’t taught for decades, the class went well. When I suggested praying that their teacher would get better, one boy said, “Can we kneel?” So we all did, and I managed […]
The Parables in General
The Bible Walk in Mansfield, Ohio, is a life-size wax museum that houses many large oil paintings of the parables by Mark Pedro. Some are pictured at the end of this blog. Did you know that parables are one-third of the Synoptic Gospels? They are a main teaching device for Jesus through which he revealed […]
Thoughts on Advent
Father Tom Weber gave this homily during Advent one year. I like the twist at the end. A couple of months ago, I went over to the Department of Motor Vehicles bureau in Mayfield Heights. I took a seat along the wall and after a while, a clerk asked me, “What are you waiting for?” […]
Feast of Christ the King, an Unusual King
This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, the climax and end of the church year. In my province of Christ the King, we used to celebrate this day in grand style, complete with the majestic song “Christus Vincit” in four-part harmony. In those days the feast occurred in October when the surrounding countryside […]
Reaching Across Divides
In November as I sat in a Newark airport at a crowded gate, across from me was a dark-skinned man in a turban, a Sikh. Suddenly he left. When he reappeared, he was pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair, which he parked by me. Her husband sat on the other side of the empty […]