Jesus’ Transfiguration—and Ours

    The gospel reading for the second Sunday in Lent, this year on February 25 in the “Common Lectionary” (used by Catholics and several other churches), comes from St. Mark’s account of the transfiguration of Jesus, who took Peter, James, and John up a “high mountain”...
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The Wisdom of the Wise Men

    The twelve days of Christmas end on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, which celebrates “wise men from the east” (Matthew 2:1) coming to worship the child Jesus in Bethlehem. They are commonly called “Three Kings,” but the Bible doesn’t call them that and doesn’t...
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The End

  The season of Advent begins this coming Sunday, and one of the readings for the season, from Matthew 24:37-4, tells of the end of time, in which Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be...
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The Style of Saints

    In just two weeks, on the first day of November, the Christian world will celebrate All Saints Day. The celebration of All Saints dates from the 7th century in Rome, when the pope changed the Pantheon from a pagan temple dedicated to all the pagan gods, into a...
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Lift High the Cross

  The Roman Basilica of Santa Sabina on the crown of the Aventine Hill in Rome was given to St. Dominic when he founded the Order of Preachers in 1216, and it remains the headquarters of the Order. It was built in the mid-fifth century and has a tall, pillared nave, light...
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Transfiguration and Hiroshima

  At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion killed an estimated one hundred thousand people. John Hersey, a journalist who had been...
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We Are Not Our Own

  Throughout the United States, and in major urban areas around the world, June is “Pride Month,” with parades to celebrate the movement that began with the “gay liberation” protests of 1969. “Pride” is now endorsed by leaders of government at every level as well as major...
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Mary’s Month

    A cartoon by Erika Sjule in the New Yorker magazine of May 8, 2023, shows a man and woman sitting at a table and the man declaiming, “If only every summer were autumn, and every autumn spring, and every late spring summer, and every winter only the holiday season,...
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The Passion of Christ and the Pandemic

    In his account of the first Good Friday, St. Matthew tells us that “from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.” (Mt. 27:45) And in his Life of Christ, Bishop Sheen says that the last judgment was prefigured on Calvary. The darkness can...
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Temptation

    The penitential season of Lent is upon us, when every year we ask ourselves what we will give up. Because we almost always choose something that gives us pleasure, we may spend the next forty days looking forward to when we can take it back. This is not a very...
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