How much time is too much time online? It’s a question facing all of us in the 21st Century, as technology becomes more and more integrated into our lives. How do we balance work, shopping, reading, communicating – all the ways that we use technology – with a desire to be intentionally present in our…
If you’re at all like me, the Easter Triduum through which we’ve just passed has proven confusing at some point. We’re told Christ dies on Good Friday, and three days later, he rises again from the dead. First of all, Friday to Sunday isn’t three days by our modern reckoning. Secondly, the space between Christ’s…
In the musical Les Miserables, there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fontine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness that life can deal a person. Abandoned by her husband, sexually harassed by her employer, caught in abject poverty, physically ill and dying, even as her main anxiety is about what…
Jem Sullivan April 23, 2023 Third Sunday of Easter Acts 2:14, 22-33 Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11 I Peter 1:17-21 Luke 24:13-35 Think of a memorable meal you had recently, or in the past. Perhaps it was a casual family gathering or a formal occasion. It may have been in a secluded place…
Easter is a reminder that Christians are called to be lights in an often dark and weary world, writes David Gibson “This is the night,” the Church sings out again and again in a poetic hymn dating far back in Christian history called the ‘Exsultet’. It is heard each year in Catholic Churches during the Easter Vigil…
After Jesus rose from the dead, his first appearances were to women. Why? One obvious reason might be that it was women who followed him to his death on Good Friday, while the men largely abandoned him. As well, it was women, not men, who set off for his tomb on Easter morning, hoping to…
Deacon Greg Kandra The Sunday Gospel April 16, 2023 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday) Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24 I Peter 1:3-9 John 20:19-31 This Sunday gives us one of my favourite Gospel readings — a story of doubt that turns into belief, of stubbornness that gives way to assent and conversion.…
The Sacrament of Penance is an opportunity rather than just an obligation, writes Russell Shaw When Dr Bernard Nathanson died of cancer in February 2011, the obituary writers dutifully recorded that he’d become a Catholic back in 1996. Some even recalled the reason he gave for taking that step. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dr…
In his passion, Jesus’ sufferings were unequaled. For the Son of God offered himself as a sacrifice for all. No one, not even the saintliest person, can take on the sins of all people in every time and place. Only God can, and did. It is this gift of faith, at the heart of our…
St Juliana of Mont Cornillon was born in 1193 at Retines near Liège in Belgium. Orphaned at an early age, she was educated by the Norbertine Canonesses Regular of Mont Cornillon. She made her profession in this order and eventually became superioress. The canonry seems to have been established on the model of a double monastery, with both…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser