Richard Rohr reminds us that the Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzen and others) said: “Don’t start with the One and try to make it into Three but start with the Three and see that this is the deepest nature of the One.” When we …
On the news today I heard a story about a woman of color who had been insulted at a campus diversity rally. A reporter asked her, “How do you answer a person who says, as this person did, ‘Freedom of speech is my First Amendment right’?” I began to think …
I lector at weekend Masses, and I get scheduled for different Masses. I hope I get to be at the Vigil (Saturday) Mass on Pentecost. There are different readings for the Vigil of Pentecost than for the Sunday Masses, and they are wonderful indeed! I especially love the one from …
In most dioceses of the United States, the feast of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated on this Seventh Sunday after Easter instead of on “Ascension Thursday.” The actual description of the Ascension is in the first reading today, from Acts of the Apostles. We are tempted to focus …
A friend gives me an amaryllis every Christmas. They bloom beautifully, though not always on Christmas — one was a Valentine amaryllis — and then die back. That’s the end of my luck with them. I put them in the basement, with some vague thought about planting the bulbs outside …
If you were dying and someone asked you, “Do you have any last words?” what would your words be? The setting of today’s passage from John’s Gospel is the last supper, so we are hearing some of Jesus’ “last words,” the words the Evangelist thought were the most important of …
If you visit the ancient basilicas in Rome, a few dating to the first half of the fourth century, you will find the motif of the vine and branches everywhere. It is on facades, on domes, on doors, climbing up pillars, in mosaic floors. It seems this motif was a …
There will be many, many people who won’t hear our Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Easter precisely because of what Luke’s Jesus is talking about in it: bad shepherds. As I visit “Catholics” in the large country hospital, I meet them — people who have walked away because of …
O Lord, in union with that divine intention with which you praised your Father to the shedding of your blood, I offer this day in adoration. This short “morning offering” which I say daily, urges me to see my day as an opportunity to do something more than simply “getting …
Our Third Sunday of Easter has a third Gospel account of a resurrection appearance; just like last week when Thomas touched the wounds on Jesus’ risen body, this account also features those wounds. The “eleven and their companions” at first believe they are seeing a ghost. So Jesus says, “look …
