The Courtship of Princess Lucilda By Father Bernard J. Ezaki Tell All the Truth Tell all the truth but tell it slant, Success in circuit lies, Too bright for our infirm delight The truth’s superb surprise; As lightning to the children eased With explanation kind, The truth
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Three Cheers for Tears
A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A Father Bernard J. Ezaki Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. There are tears in our affairs, and things mortal touch the mind. –Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 1, Line 462– In 1867, Mark Twain took a cruise with some fellow Americans
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I Know What You Did
A Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent Year A Here is one of my favorite stories. It is entitled, “Grandma’s Pet Duck,” and its author is Pastor Steven Cole. I give it to you with a few embellishments: When little Johnny was visiting his grandparents, he was
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The Ace of Spades and the King of Hearts
I was recently surprised to learn that National Geographic’s geneticist Spencer Wells has argued convincingly that, based on markers in human DNA, all human beings are descended from a single set of parents! That’s right. Wells calls them, appropriately enough, Scientific Adam and Scientific Eve and says they lived
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Better than We Found It
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it
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Flight into Freedom
Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
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Symbol of Rome Is Grown
In 1980, when Renée Riley was a chubby cherubic child of all of four months, she captured the heart of artist and family friend Dana Van Horn, who was then living in upstate New York. At the time, Van Horn was hard at work on a commission he had
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Sin as Shortcut
A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year A Jesuit priest Father Mark Link tells this story: John was a contractor for a construction company. To increase his personal income, he routinely cheated on materials that went into the homes he built. He was so adept
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I Want a Star!
They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. –Matthew 2:11-12– In the formal dining room
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Follow the Bouncing Braids
A Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C We hear that some are conducting themselves among you in a disorderly way, by not keeping busy but minding the business of others. Such people we instruct and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and to
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