A friend of mine shares this story. He was an only child. When he was in his late twenties, still single, building a successful career and living in the same city as his mother and father, his father died, leaving his mother widowed. His mother, who had centred her life on her family and on…
Deacon Greg Kandra September 3 Jer 20:7-9 Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9 Rom 12:1-2 Mt 16:21-27 It’s probably the last thing Peter ever expected to hear. There, in that moment, Jesus Christ was speaking of suffering and death, how he would be killed and yet be raised. What Jesus was describing was shocking. Peter, hearing…
Mother Teresa’s imitation of Christ provides an example for us all, writes Amy Welborn No modern figure has been more revered as a saint in life, so the rapid progress of Mother Teresa’s cause from her death to her canonisation within two decades came as no surprise. From the day Mother Teresa rode on a…
Scott Richert A decade or more ago, I went to Confession one Saturday afternoon. Like many other priests, the particular confessor who heard my confession that day frequently defaulted to three Hail Marys as the standard penance that he assigned. But not that day. Whether led by something I had confessed or by his own…
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe How we live our lives is substantially different from how our parents and grandparents lived theirs. We no longer need to wait a whole week for the next episode of a favourite TV show; we can watch all five seasons in a single binge. We don’t have to buy tickets or drive…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: My new parish priest’s wife died before he became a priest. He sometimes even talks about his grandchildren during the homily. Why is this allowed? He obviously wasn’t always celibate, and I thought priests had to be celibate? A: Latin (a.k.a. “Roman”) Catholic priests are indeed expected to be celibate.…
A colleague of mine, a clinical therapist, shares this story: A woman came to him in considerable distress. Her husband had recently died of a heart attack. His death had been sudden and at a most inept time. They’d been happily married for 30 years and, during all those years, had never had a major…
Jem Sullivan August 27 Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 22:19-23 Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8 Rom 11:33-36 Mt 16:13-20 Artificial intelligence and language processing tools like ChatGPT are changing the face of education today. Teachers are finding new ways to evaluate what their students truly know. Instead of superficial questions that can be answered easily by…
St Pope John Paul II’s insightful encyclical has yet to be studied and implemented as it should be, writes Carl Olson August 6 marked the 30th anniversary of St John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendour of Truth”). It is the first and only papal encyclical focused on moral theology. Its continued importance cannot…
Fr Patrick Briscoe OP As I stood at the bars of the chilling confines of St Maximilian Kolbe‘s cell within the walls of Auschwitz, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by an inexplicable mix of emotions. The gravity of the place and the memory it held were inescapable. And yet, at the same time, a…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser