Sometimes when the bell rings to signal the end of class, I say to my students: “I hate to see you go.” On other occasions, when I am feeling a little playful, I might say: “I hate to see you. Go!” Obviously words are not everything. Punctuation is key.
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Do you wish to know the most intimate perfections of Jesus and the most hidden attractions of His love? Then seek them in the heart of Mary! –Saint Peter Eymard– Being a legally blind priest does indeed have its challenges. For one thing, I cannot read most printed material
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“But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they will fast” –Matthew 9:15– Lent, as we all know, is a time of special fasting and abstinence. There are, of course, a number of physical benefits of fasting and abstinence. We might
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In the second chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph discover the missing twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple, and Mary says: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”[1] Our Lady is actually calling Saint Joseph
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Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. –Matthew 4:19– My friend Conrad uses a boat and sonar to map out the bottoms of lakes. In other words, he charts the topography of lake bottoms, indicating the kinds of plant life, as well as the various
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At the very beginning of the Bible, in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, we have this description of the Tower of Babel: While men were migrating eastward, they discovered a valley in the land of Sennaar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks
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Imagine. It is the year 1440. You are standing on a quiet hillside somewhere deep in the heart of France. Off in the distance, you see the double-spired magnificence of a Gothic cathedral, its newly quarried stone gleaming white against a backdrop of green trees and azure sky. Almost
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When I taught at Bethlehem Catholic High School in the 1990s, there was a custom that each of the four classes could decorate a hallway for Catholic Schools Week. One year, the seniors, who had been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy in English class, hit upon a very creative idea.
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When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. –Luke 2:21– Years ago, January 1st used to be known as the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord. That makes, not only
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These last have worked a single hour, and thou hast put them on a level with us, who have borne the burden of the day’s heat –Matthew 20:12– When my little sister Carol was young, she used to read a magazine called Children’s Highlights. Every issue contained a clever
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