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The impetuous one goes to school Gerard Seghers – Repentance of St Peter I’m drawn to the apostle Peter on this Tuesday of Holy Week. Peter, the impetuous one. “Master, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”  We can call this another moment in the… Read More »Tuesday, April 7th

Letting her hair down. We’ve taken to responding “perfect” these days to texts and emails making arrangements of one sort or another. It’s so common that, however reassuring, my contrarian self usually avoids it. Not so with what Mary does in today’s Gospel: anointing the feet of Jesus with a large quantity… Read More »Monday, April 6th

The vain delights that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood… Holy Week is not for the faint of heart. A good prayer at the beginning of this sacred time is to have the courage to face these events as they unfold, not to turn away from them,… Read More »Palm Sunday, April 5th

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world. During Holy Week we commemorate the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and celebrate with great joy the victory he won for us over sin and death. In this time of… Read More »Holy Week reflections begin on Sunday

The most harrowing, heart-breaking aspect of this pandemic is the enforced separation of the sick and dying from those who love them. Having to stay away from your spouse or your parent or your best friend at their time of greatest need, how terrible is that. And then, in the… Read More »Seeing our way through

Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1661–1669 The longest of the three parables on God’s mercy in chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel bears the traditional title of The Prodigal Son, named after the younger son who wasted his inheritance in a foreign land. Since the father is the central figure… Read More »Lost in place

In a piece for Assumption’s alumni magazine a few years back, I was musing on the fact that students rate getting a good job as the #1 reason for going to college. No surprise there, but there’s an irony lurking in that. The more apparently practical and pragmatic one approaches the… Read More »What is a sure bet?

Birth stories in the ancient world were told in order to honor a person of great stature and to anticipate, by the details surrounding the birth, his or her heroic or saintly deeds. I have my own birth story that, consistent with the non-heroic temper of our time, reverses the… Read More »Inauspicious Beginnings

If God were to write you a “blank check,” what would you ask for? “Ask what I shall give you,” he says to a young Solomon as he succeeds his father David as king of Israel. Solomon’s response is to make note of his youth, his inexperience, his cluelessness (“I… Read More »Solomon’s desire

Flannery O’Connor, the great Southern Catholic short story writer, was once asked why she uses violence at critical moments in her stories. “To the hard of hearing you shout,” she said, “and to the almost blind you use large and startling figures.” Jesus knew this as well. “If your hand causes… Read More »A word to rouse them