During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. –Luke 1:39-40– At the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she conceived the Christ-child in
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But he [the elder son] was angered and would not go in. –Luke 15:28– There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in
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In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has first loved us… –1 John 4:10– Once upon a time, a strong magnet fell in love with a slender nail. The magnet confided to the nail: “I love you. If you love me, become magnetized.”
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Bethlehem Catholic High School I was wondering about the difference between a virtuous person, on the one hand, and a saint on the other. What makes the difference? I was mulling over this question, and I found the answer—in, of all places, the dentist’s chair. It’s September 5th,
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Draw near to him [i.e. Jesus], a living stone, rejected indeed by men but chosen and honored by God. Be you yourselves as living stones, built thereon into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. –1 Peter 2:4-5– The early
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Blind guides, who strain out the gnat but swallow the camel! –Matthew 23:24– In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, people are obsessing about unimportant things such as television shows, all the while failing to take any notice of the war that is threatening to destroy their society. That
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And they kept inquiring by signs of his father what he would have him called. –Luke 1:62– The account of the restoration of Zechariah’s power of speech (Luke 1:57-66) is one of my favorite biblical passages, because I believe it lends support to the reliability of the Evangelists, that
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A Talk for the Serra Club’s Dinner for Newly Ordained Priests I have often told Jesus that if I had to invent a religion, I could not come up with a seemingly stranger one than Catholicism. How can the Eucharist, what appears to be bread and wine, really be
Read moreGod so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. –John 3:16– Just this past week, a friend sent me a YouTube link to a video by a young man named Aaron Harburg. It’s
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He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. –Mark 6:8-9– One of my closest friends in the priesthood is Father Frans Berkhout, former principal of
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