Divine Mercy: The way of freedom
This is a reflection on the readings of April 11, 2021, the Second Sunday of Easter, the Sunday of Divine Mercy Who are the freest people in the world? If you are an American, your first thought might be that...
Category: Reflection
Encountering Christ the Consoler
As Lent 2021 began, many joked that they felt the penitential season had not ended since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. While well-meaning, this humor belies the profound stress, change, fear, sickness, and loss that has transpired...
“With him, life begins anew”
In his Easter Vigil homily tonight at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Francis once again emphasized the theme of amazement that has characterized Holy Week this year. He describes the amazement of the women who discovered the empty tomb...
“It is finished”
“Jesus was lifted high on the cross in order to descend to the abyss of our suffering. He experienced our deepest sorrows: failure, loss of everything, betrayal by a friend, even abandonment by God. By experiencing in the flesh our...
The New Covenant – A ‘New Normal’
When I prepared my Holy Thursday homily last year, the pandemic was raging, public liturgies were suspended, everybody participated online, there was no washing of feet, and—besides the celebrant—no one received the bread and wine of the Last Supper. As...
Christ’s plea for unity in a divided Church
With the Holy Triduum forthcoming, the prayer of Jesus prior to his arrest is timely for our contemplation: “I pray…that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be...
Filled with Amazement
I was overcome with unexpected emotion at Palm Sunday Mass this week. It has been a year since Covid-19 interrupted our lives. I thought about our family’s last Palm Sunday, when the pandemic had just begun. That day, we collected...
Extraordinary Urbi et Orbi, One Year Later
On March 27, 2020, the world focused its attention on Rome. A lone man dressed in white punctuated the eerily empty St. Peter’s Square, normally bustling with tourists and pilgrims. One year ago today we joined Pope Francis for a...
Entering into Friendship with Pope Francis
I was reminiscing recently with a friend of mine, a consecrated layperson living the vocation of virginity, about Pope Francis’s visit to New York City in September 2015. Although I got within a mere city block of the Holy Father,...
A blind eye
“I ask the Lord to renew in each one of you the gift of faith, that your spirit may be for us ever the light of God, the light of love, which gives meaning to your life, illuminates it, gives...
Dante’s Fiat and Ours
When we moved to California and bought our first home, I enthusiastically set out to decorate it. I knew that I wanted a picture of the Annunciation to hang at the bottom of our stairs so that every morning it...
The cultural garment of Filipino Catholicism
One of my earliest memories involves kneeling next to my Filipino mother at her home altar. Her altar has two Virgin Mary statues, one of sterling silver and the other of porcelain, and a Santo Nino. Santo Nino is clothed...
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