One day a man came up to a priest and asked him, “Father, would you like to shake hands with a converted drunkard?” Naturally, the priest was happy to do so, and after they shook hands, the man told his story. “Father, years ago I had a good job, a...
About forty years ago, a ten-year-old boy named Dave was taught how to play chess by his grandfather, a World War II veteran. They played frequently, and, after three years of trying, Dave, at age 13, finally beat his grandfather. As he helped him...
A famous movie made back in 1959 was the religious epic Ben Hur, starring the great actor Charlton Heston (with a remake made in 2016). In this fictional story, Judah Ben Hur was a wealthy Jewish prince living in Jerusalem with his mother and sister...
A wise old farmer was visiting a friend who lived in the city, and after dinner—because it was a nice evening—they decided to a take a walk over to the park. To reach it, though, they first had to go down a crowded sidewalk along a busy street...
One morning the mother of a two-year-old boy was horrified to find him playing with an empty bottle of her husband’s heart medicine. She couldn’t get her son to tell her what had happened to the pills in the bottle, so she rushed him to the...
An elderly priest was reminiscing about the earliest days of his priesthood, which occurred during World War II. Father Smith, as we’ll call him, served in a rural diocese, with many small parishes scattered throughout the countryside; he was...
I was never really a fan of the Star Trek TV series, but I did end up seeing and enjoying most of the Star Trek movies. One of my favorite characters was Mr. Spock, the first officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise:  a natural second-in-command who was...
Whenever Mass is celebrated, the Scripture readings are taken from a book called the Lectionary, from the Latin word lectio, which means “reading.” For some centuries, the Church had a lectionary in which the same passages were repeated on any given...