Death as the Way to Life

  This coming Thursday, Christians celebrate Jesus giving to his Church the sacrament of his body and blood. The Holy Eucharist is both a remembrance and a proclamation of his death. Both are included in the earliest reference we have to the Holy Eucharist, from a letter of...
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Blessing in Desert Places

    It was August when my husband and I moved last year to the desert Southwest. We arrived in plenty of time to soak up the last month of 100-degree weather. Since then, we have experienced sandstorms that recall in living color the old movies where cowboys wore...
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The Prodigal Son and “Love Them Both”

  “Love them both”—I have long appreciated the way this pro-life slogan acknowledges the sincerity in pro-choice expressions of concern for women’s welfare while inviting everyone to consider the humanity of the child as a subject of our love. When I input the slogan, my...
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Down Syndrome Day?

  Have you ever wondered why we see so few children with Down syndrome today compared to past generations? The single biggest reason is that in the United States roughly 9 out of 10 babies are aborted if they are diagnosed with Down syndrome as a result of prenatal...
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Murders in Kansas; Marked for Life

  The mid-to-late fifties were a good time to grow up in Garden City, Kansas—a town of 10,000. My mother never lacked love, energy, dreams, and the most encouraging words. My father modeled a work ethic, held us accountable, and shared his wisdom, including how to be...
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A Beautiful Outside

  It was the seventies. Susan and I walked past it every Sunday on our way to and from church. It was a lovely little house, single-story, low adobe wall lined with flowers around the yard, a walk to the door. One Sunday, Susan told me: “They do abortions there.” We were...
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“God first, me Second”

  Ash Wednesday is nearly upon us, the beginning of Lent. The imposition of ashes of burnt palm branches on our foreheads calls to mind the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. In his honor, the people laid out palm branches along the road that took Jesus, riding on a...
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Pastoral Reflection for Lent 2025

  On the first Sunday in Lent this year, many churches will read St. Luke’s account of our Lord’s forty days’ temptations in the wilderness, which is preceded by a genealogy of Jesus (Lk. 3:23-38). St. Matthew’s Gospel has a genealogy too (Mt. 1:1-17), proceeding from...
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Saved But Not Yet Safe

  I recently read Carmen Joy Imes’s Bearing God’s Name, an accessible, albeit somewhat academic meditation on the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. This is just my sort of thing, both meditative and intellectual, biblical and gentle. During the course of the book, Imes...
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Pro-life Integrity

    Persuasive people are logical, passionate—and credible. And undergirding credibility is the virtue of integrity. If prolifers want to win people over to the pro-life cause, we should be in the habit of building and repairing our own integrity. A lack of integrity...
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