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    This last week in May, either on Thursday or on Sunday, Catholics celebrate Christ’s gift of himself to us in the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament of his Body and Blood. The Feast of Corpus Christi was established in 1264 by Pope Urban IV, who asked St. Thomas Aquinas... Read More →

    A couple of years ago, a colleague shared with a few of us that her daughter was suffering from a likely terminal cancer. The child rallied and faltered, and we rode the waves with her family in our prayers. We cooed over photographs of her bald little nine-year-old... Read More →

  Hope, together with faith and charity, makes up the triptych of the “theological virtues” that express the heart of the Christian life (cf. 1 Cor 13:13; 1 Thess 1:3). In their inseparable unity, hope is the virtue that, so to speak, gives inward direction and purpose to... Read More →

    “It is not enough that I succeed; everyone else must fail.” Google attributes this quote to a Mongol conqueror of the 12th and 13th centuries, though how Google would know baffles me: I can’t find one blog or social media post signed Genghis Khan. Seriously, the... Read More →

  The following letter involves fictional characters and circumstances. It is written to encourage, that is, to bolster the courage of those tempted by abortion—including their pastors. (PTS)  __________________________ Dear Karin: God’s grace and peace to you and yours. I... Read More →

    God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in... Read More →

    The season that extends for forty days from Easter Sunday to the feast of the Ascension celebrates the time when Jesus revealed his resurrection in many ways. The four gospels give us only a selection of our Lord’s appearances—just enough to illustrate their great... Read More →

  Today the West lives as if God did not exist . . . This estrangement from God is not caused by reasoning but by a will to be detached from him. The atheistic orientation of a life is almost always a decision by the will. Man no longer wishes to reflect on his relationship to... Read More →

  When Jesus says at his death, “It is finished” (also translated “It is accomplished”), he refers not only to his earthly ministry, but to the purpose for which man and woman were created: to love God and neighbor wholeheartedly for as long as we live. With Jesus’ victory... Read More →

    March 25 is the feast of the Annunciation, the annual celebration of the angel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and give birth to Jesus. Since March 25 falls in Holy Week this year, its celebration has been postponed to the second week of Easter.... Read More →