Saturday of the 21st Week of the Year: Some notions of humility would find this virtue exemplified in the third servant with the one talent who humbly admitted his failure to trade with that single talent. In contrast, the servant who received five talents and made five more seems proud and even boastful. And yet […]

Greatness and littleness seem to be mutually exclusive. Any yet in the spiritual realm, as we know, littleness paradoxically opens us to greatness. Once greatness is achieved, however, littleness must be preserved if true greatness is not to be lost. Bernard, often mistakenly (but understandably) thought to be the founder of our Order, is someone […]

The paradox of a scroll tasting sweet to Ezekiel despite being inscribed with lamentation and woe, suggests that it wasn’t the lamentations and woe, per se, that made it sweet, but rather that these were calling God’s rebellious people back to fidelity and friendship. In this sense, all suffering that serves to draw us back […]

Matthew 17:14-20 A man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said, “Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus said in reply, “O faithless and […]

The fear of failure can be a very inhibiting state of mind that can constrict our lives and interfere with our full human development—both spiritually and psychologically. Peter can serve as a powerful antidote to this fear. Despite several major failures in his life he doesn’t allow fear of further failure deter him. And so […]

Although the formal period of prophecy is said to have ended with John the Baptist, God’s claim to Jeremiah that he constantly sends his servants the prophets still holds true in our own time. Our problem is that we don’t recognize the voices of prophecy sounding in the course of every day calling us to […]

Jeremiah was clearly a humble man: After having repeatedly warned his fellow Israelites of their impending doom, he makes no effort to smugly remind them of this when disaster falls. On the contrary, he identifies himself completely with their sinfulness, intercedes on their behalf and, as we know, quietly suffers with them in the tragic […]

As Catholics our abundant use of symbols and material objects like water, oil, bread, wine, and incense can open us to superstitious beliefs and even magical thinking. This occurs when symbols lose their purpose to point beyond themselves to deeper realities and are somehow imbued with powers of their own. It’s not holy water itself […]

We approach God and undertake a life of virtue for very mixed motives—some of which we are initially unaware of. Typically, it is in the disappointment of some of our expectations of God not being met that our deeper motivations come out of hiding. James and John’s desire to be at Christ’s right and left […]

Mercy (which God desires more than sacrifice) is not about turning a blind eye to sin and glossing over transgressions. Rather, it’s about the door to God’s heart never being closed to those who approach him in repentance and sorrow—no matter the gravity of the sin. And since this mercy is integral to God’s holiness—a […]