Love Does Not Envy

During my twenty-four-year stay in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I came to know a woman named Anne who, in many ways, was like a second mother to me.  Anne was full of maternal wisdom.  About her own children, she’d say, “You can give birth to ‘m, but you can’t explain ‘m.”  She

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Marriage!

Homily delivered on the 50th wedding anniversary of Anna Marie & Richard Culver 20 November 2015 Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain

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Eyes Wide Open

Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure: Married in haste, we may repent at leisure. –William Congreve, The Old Batchelour (1693)– Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards. –Ben Franklin– As a Catholic student at Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA), in the late 1970s, in

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From Water to Wine

            Isn’t it amazing how many jokes there are about the hardships of married life?  We’ve all heard them.  Here, for example, are only four: I never knew what bliss was until I got married, and now it’s too late. My wife and I were perfectly happy for thirty years. 

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The Two Shall Become One

Therefore now they are no longer two, but one flesh. –Matthew 19:6–             Most people who own cactus plants are familiar with what is known as a grafted cactus.  Botanists are able to take two very different species of cactus and join them together.  The resulting plant, though it would

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