god
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We have a snake in our backyard. He’s a 2-3 foot black racer, and he likes to hang out on the rocks by our garden hoses, so I call him Rocky. I had a pet grass snake for a little while when I was young, so I don’t mind Rocky. April is another story. I’ve
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How do we treat a traitor? Trust in institutions is broad and deep. We distrust almost everyone, it seems, and along with that distrust comes the feeling that people are betraying us, selling us out for power or wealth. Maybe it’s insurance executives delaying and denying claims so they can pocket more profit, or private
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Who’s on your team? Today’s Mass readings include a great passage from Romans 12 that is translated in a way that makes it more engaging: Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them: if prophecy, in proportion to the faith; if ministry, in ministering; if one
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The Bible readings for the Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (October 26, 2025) seems tailor-made for Pope Leo XIV’s newly released apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te. The first reading from Sirach dwells on God hearing the cry of the oppressed, the wail of the orphan and widow, the prayer of the lowly.* The Psalm response is
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Who is Jesus to you? I’ve been asked that by a couple of people recently, and, to be honest, my answer to that is pretty flat. I know the “right” answer, but the reality is that I’ve always found it easier to relate to God through the (non-anthropomorphized) Holy Spirit than through the person of
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What must it be like to fall apart in front of tens of thousands of people? What must it be like to be a performer, on-stage, unable to sing the song you made, the one that made you famous? Sometimes people who aren’t religious think that Christians have a delusional sense that, with enough belief,
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At what point do our scruples do more harm than good? Scrupulosity is not a term you hear a lot these days, even though I think it’s a burgeoning condition now in both secular and sacred circles. (We tend to go with the more pathological term, OCD.) Back in the day, Jesus poked at the
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The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing. I mentioned earlier this week that the daily Mass readings this week cover the return to Jerusalem and rebuilding of the Temple, but one of those readings has really stuck with me all week, because I think it speaks to a larger question
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To whom do we belong? I’ve been thinking a lot about a truism about religion that social scientists point out. For most of us, our faith (including secularism as a form of faith) isn’t so much something we adopt through reason, or something to whose principles we assent cognitively. Instead, for most of us, we
Reading Francis 