“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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
“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...
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...
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...
Pope Francis’s brief but historic visit to Iraq appears to have already become old news. Indeed, the Holy Father had not landed in Rome on his return trip before reporters shifted attention to future papal visits, including the scheduled September...
A reflection on the Sunday readings for March 21, 2021 — the Fifth Sunday in Lent This is the story of Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng, a Burmese nun. As you are likely aware, recently the military assumed power in Burma...
In the Divine Praises, Saint Joseph is called the “most chaste spouse.” Personally speaking, and given the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity, in the past I’ve implicitly reduced Joseph’s chastity to the simple fact that his wife was a virgin....
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