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I was reflecting this week on what a blessing my friends who are agnostic or atheist are. I’ll get to that in a minute. Here’s something I learned last week that was pretty interesting. The opening verses of the Gospel of Mark quote Isaiah 40: “A voice crying out in the desert: / Prepare the
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I don’t like big crowds. In big crowds, people are annoying, self-absorbed, and pushy. And by “people,” of course, I mean me. I am at my worst in the midst of a big mass of disorganized humanity. Happy holidays. Recently, I had a chance to step outside of such a crowd. I was waiting for
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God is like my mom at Thanksgiving. I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot over the last few days. With Thanksgiving approaching, we are very excited about our college kid coming home for a few days, and it has reminded me of all the Thanksgiving trips home we made to Jacksonville for family dinners
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We make each other who we are. The mass readings for Sunday are kind of an odd combination. The first two (Proverbs 31 and Psalm 128) have a common theme: the blessing of a worthy wife. The second reading (1 Thessalonians 5:1-6) is one of those end-of-the-liturgical-year “the end is coming” warnings, which only ties
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“Leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give to each instant of life the time it deserves.” – Br. David Steindl-Rast “Take the big trip.” I was catching up with a good friend who said this, not as a directive, but as a descriptor of
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If a miracle happens, and nobody notices, it’s still a miracle. The synod on synodality’s first general session (of two) just ended. After a break of eleven months to go home, do some laundry, get some sleep, and catch up on bills, the 365 members of the synod will reconvene next year to re-engage on
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This isn’t the homily I heard today, but it’s the one I wish I’d heard. Yesterday was All Saints’ Day, which is a holy day of obligation. We had a big crowd for a weekday mass, we had music, we did all the things. For those of you used to a 30-minute daily mass, it
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Yesterday, October 4, 2023, was kind of a big day in the Catholic Church. The current pope, Francis, did a couple of things that haven’t been done before. The bigger of those things was the launch of a new phase of gathering the Church together to discern what God wants us to do. This gathering,
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I am on record for believing in low expectations. Any day that does not end in calamity is a win, in my book. But I don’t think that makes me a pessimist. Just because I can’t think of any way to turn this ship around doesn’t mean I don’t believe it can be done. I’m
Reading Francis 