What is most important to you? Today, right now, what is that one thing that is most important in your life? Think about your answer for a second. Will your answer be different a day from now? Or in a week? Or in a year? What if I were to…
Do you?
For children, many things come easily. Put a pair of ice skates on a three year old and it doesn’t take long before they’re effortlessly zooming around the ice. Give a four year old a smartphone and after a week they’ll know its functions better than most adults. For a…
Behold your brother
Every year during the season of Lent, there are many opportunities for us to enter deeper into Christ’s Passion. Of course there is Ash Wednesday and with it the reminder of our own mortality. There are also the customary reminders for increased penance, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. If, during Lent,…
The Face of Faith
One of the great discomforts that many people have to endure at some point in their lives is orthodontics. After hours with your mouth open, you now have a mouth full of metal. It feels weird. It’s moderately painful. And there’s nothing attractive about it. Oh sure, you’re told all…
Milestones & Millstones
Another New Year. Another January. For some, it’s a time for looking back at the events of the year past, both the good and the bad. For others, it’s a time for looking forward, to put last year behind us. Either way, whether looking forward or backwards — what is…
Focus
Remember a time, not so long ago (in the grand scheme of things) when seeing someone wearing a mask in public was strange? If you were in a convenience store and saw someone come in with a mask, you’d think they were there to rob the place. It feels like…
If Only
“If only…” Two little words. Two syllables. A total of six letters. Despite their diminutive size, how much power do those two words bring to affect change in the course of human events, both great and small? “If only I could eat of the fruit of that tree…” “If only…
And Jesus weeps
Today is Columbus Day. Later on this month, in just a few short weeks, Fr. Michael J McGivney, founder of our Order, will be beatified. When he founded the Knights of Columbus, our mainly Protestant country was very hostile toward Catholics and Catholic beliefs. It was in this climate that…
Get on the Boat
In 1570, Sultan Selim II, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, had a problem. Well, actually a couple problems. First, was that he was a drunk. Second, was that his favorite wine came from Cypress, just under 300 miles away from him, off the coast of Turkey. Third, was that Cypress…
In A Flash
Some years ago, on a bright, clear August morning, four Jesuit missionaries had just finished having breakfast together, and were going through their daily routine at the Church of Our Lady’s Assumption. Father Superior Lassalle looked out the window of his room and thought. Father Cieslik went to his room…