Even when it seems futile, even in times of crisis, disbelief, and persecution, the Church must obey the Lord’s command to put out into the deep, that is to say, to preach the Gospel, to seek souls for Christ.Read More

Over time, I have come to see how easily discussions of religious freedom can start off on the wrong foot. We often wade into controversies over specific threats to religious freedom without sufficiently reflecting on what freedom itself is and on how the exercise of our freedoms are to engage and influence the culture in...Read More

Could there be anything more engaging than the drama that unfolds before our eyes of faith on this, the feast of the Lord’s Presentation in the Temple? This scene was not created by a playwright or a producer but rather by the One “for whom and through whom all things were made.”Read More

Presuming there is good soil in our hearts and that we are tending it, the seed of faith planted there in Baptism grows slowly, according to the design of God’s grace and mercy, and sometimes, without our realizing it.Read More

Believe it or not, dear friends, you and I are also called to be “a walking sermon”. Or, as the Second Vatican Council put it, we are to be “traveling messengers of Christ.” Now, the Council’s words, “travelling messengers of Christ”, were not directed only to members of the clergy, or to our heroic missionaries...Read More

When we mediate on this beautiful passage in the Gospel, we can only marvel at how much God loves us. For at this very moment we find ourselves, not at the wedding feast of Cana but at Mass in which we celebrate anew the marriage covenant between God and his People, the Church, of which we...Read More

Whether we like it or not, we are undergoing a baptism of fire. These days the Church and its leadership are under intense scrutiny and even if some of the initial anger of our parishioners has cooled, you and I know that it smolders just beneath the surface.Read More

This is why Jesus was plunged into the waters of the Jordan: not because he needed to be saved from sin but rather to save us from our sins; to redeem us from the disfigurement that sin inflicts upon our souls; and to clothe our humanity with the glorious mantle of immorality and divine life.Read More