“God wills, Man dreams, the work is born” — Fernando Pessoa “O Infante,” “Mensagem” (my translation) Pope Francis often asks us to dream. In fact, the Holy Father signs off his most recent encyclical with these words: “Yet only by identifying with the least did [Blessed Charles de Foucauld] come at last to...
As the Savior of humanity, Jesus Christ had a record of embracing those disparaged by members of his Jewish culture. It was common for him to dialogue with tax collectors, gentiles, women, sinners, and prostitutes conveying to them that they were a part of the Kingdom. To Jesus, everyone, regardless of their unique...
In 2020, racial violence and police brutality towards Black persons have profoundly marked this tragic year beset by the Coronavirus pandemic. We’re concluding Black Catholic History Month today. Various Catholic organizations noted the celebration in some way. For example, the US Bishops promoted Black saints on their website. Given the current state of...
The traditional understanding of Christian eschatology is decidedly linear, moving from a defined creation to a defined end of time. While this model of time has more corroboration from the natural sciences today, it is in many ways less intuitive than the “cyclical” model that other religions follow. Over the course of history,...
Do you remember when you were a teenager and you first discovered the joy and freedom of going out with your friends? Oddly, the experience I recall most about going out with my friends was the moment I returned home. Whether I was being dropped off or driving, I remember the first thing...
A reflection on the Sunday readings for November 29, 2020 — the First Sunday of Advent This is the first Advent we have observed during a pandemic and this will be our first pandemic Christmas. What if I told you that the attitude and the spirit needed for the season of Advent and the...
“But first We must speak of man’s rights. Man has a right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be...
Community—communion—is the fundamental building block of the Catholic faith. Christ draws us into himself to create the community of believers, a cloud of witnesses. Even more foundational is that God does this radically by offering the whole of himself to us in the Eucharist, becoming one flesh with us and, thus, making us...
This has been a Thanksgiving like no other. A national holiday that we otherwise celebrate with abandon is being observed with utmost caution, restraint, devoid of large family gatherings, and perhaps, even alone. A pandemic Thanksgiving – it almost sounds like an oxymoron, but this is the world in which we find ourselves...
Pope Francis continually encourages us to reflect inwardly on our spiritual lives in ways that compel us to take concrete actions toward building God’s kingdom on earth. I recently wrote about some ways that eschatological reflection can lead us to act. Likewise—in the spirit of Thanksgiving—I’d like to reflect on how living gratefully...
The Catholic world, and the world at large, is in need of unambiguous and prophetic spiritual guidance, and Pope Francis has provided just that in his new book with Austen Ivereigh, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future (Simon & Schuster). This compact and beautifully-written work functions as both a roadmap...
I had the pleasure of having been invited to the podcast “Tradition Reclaimed“, a Youtube channel focused on advancing authentic tradition, in communion with the living magisterium. In this episode we talked about the encyclical Fratelli tutti and the richness of tradition underlying it.
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