Occasionally, someone who is neither religious nor spiritual asks for our prayers for some temporal or earthly need. In doing so, they highlight a sometimes mercenary and self‑seeking tendency in our own approach to seeking God’s help. For although we value—and are even grateful for—whatever help God grants us, we can be adept at simultaneously […]

Like the Pharisees we encounter in today’s gospel, we too can have a problem recognizing the Christ who is among us, and whose face we are challenged to behold in one another. However, this difficulty springs largely from our own hearts—both from our failure to discern Christ in the brother/sister we dislike and find difficult, […]

Our gospel today concludes, rather matter‑of‑factly, with a description of the Holy Family’s return to their own town of Nazareth. Taken in isolation, it gives no hint of the momentous events that had just unfolded in the life of this little and poor family. Shepherds, angels, Magi, and the stirring witness of Simeon, and Anna […]

There is a significant difference between the person seeking a sign from God because he or she doesn’t fully trust God, and the person who seeks a sign in order to discern God’s will and intention. Gideon’s fleece was an instant of the latter, whereas Zechariah’s incredulity an example of the former. Between these two, […]

Being a nation of immigrants, the attempt to trace our ancestors and draw up a family tree is a popular one. However, in some cases the family tree can be a source of embarrassment as less than noble members are uncovered—members we might prefer to exclude from our ancestry. And yet, as we listen to […]

Approving an apparition of Mary as “authentic” comes only after careful and rigorous investigation by the Church. Our Lady’s appearance at Tepeyac was one that has been thus authenticated. However, there is a sense in which even authenticated Marian apparitions are inauthentic. By this I mean that visionaries never actually see Mary as she now […]

The distinction between an imminent and transcendent God may seem little more than one of those specialized domains of erudite theologians that have only limited interest or relevance to you and I. And yet, nothing could be further from the truth. For Christians the notion of an imminent God—one present among us and in our […]

Eating a morsel of pork seems such a benign act in exchange for not surrendering one’s body to torture and execution! Surely, bodily life—that precious gift of God—is more important than avoiding some minor infraction of the Law? Still, as we know, this was more than slavish obedience to some arbitrary dietary law. For, eating […]

The beauty of the fall colors we have witnessed over the last few weeks is just one instance of what the Book of Wisdom describes as expressions of the beauty of the Creator. As Christians the world of nature is—as Saint Bernard observed—the book in which we can read of God and gain some insight […]

It is a very evil person who is completely devoid of all virtue. And not being that evil, we surely all possess certain virtues—some of which may be weaker and others more developed. The distribution between weaker and more developed virtues is significantly linked to spiritual, psychological, and physical factors present and operative since early […]