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    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... Read More →

  The opening verse of Psalm 96 provides a fitting message as we begin the Year of the Lord 2024: “O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth!” To sing a new song is to give voice to a new tune and lyrics. Something not heard before will now be offered to... Read More →

    Christmas incites observers to contemplate the overthrow of the worldly order on behalf of the oppressed. The pro-life movement, in order to protect the unborn, sustains the seditious nature of Christmas and enlivens Christmas hope. Casting down the Mighty Sometime... Read More →

    The traditional Nine Lessons and Carols opens with the carol “Once in Royal David’s City.” The words were written by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848; they first appeared in the U.S. in Cantica Sacra, Hymns for the Children of the Catholic Church, in 1865. In the lessons... Read More →

           “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human…. “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins….” –The Nicene Creed (In 2025, the 1,700th... Read More →

    My son and I are reading through a biography of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer and dissident who exposed to the world the brutal and then hidden underbelly of Soviet brutality, and who pleaded with the world—East and West—to “live not by lies.”  This... Read More →

  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... Read More →

    I had spent the night in an airport on a ten-hour layover, not quite as awful as it sounds but no rival for the much-anticipated comfort of my own home. Bleary-eyed as we took off at 7 AM—no one on the flight was what my father would have called “bright-eyed and... Read More →

    The Church of the Holy Family, where I serve as pastor, is in midtown Manhattan, across the street from the United Nations campus. The church is open Monday to Friday from 7 AM to 6 PM. Day in and day out, I am impressed to see the many people who come in to pray... Read More →

      The Sisters of Life are no strangers to readers of the Human Life Review. But they pretty much were to me before my Bishop invited one of them, Sr. Virginia Joy, to speak to the clergy and lay ministers of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. I had no idea what I... Read More →