Vincent Ryan RuggieroAll Christians know the story of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection by heart. They know, as well, the incomparable blessing bestowed by those events, succinctly expressed in the words, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only...
Fr Joseph EsperEarly in the 20th century there was a German Jewish author named Franz Kafka who wrote gripping but disturbing stories of people desperately searching for salvation in a cruel and depressing world. One of these stories is titled The Castle, in which...
An explorer and adventurer from New Zealand named Edmund Hillary wanted to do something no one else had done, so he set his sight on the highest mountain in the world: Mount Everest, in the Himalayan Mountain range on the border between the Asian...
Fr Dino VaninSo that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings. (Genesis 9:15) Evidently those misguided and self-righteous preachers who, in 2005, said that Katrina was God’s punishment for the sins of the people of New Orleans...
In the middle of the 19th century, there was a six-year-old boy down South, whom we’ll call Mark. His parents had just died, and a well-to-do aunt who lived nearby took him in and raised him as if he were her own son. He grew up, received a good...
Almost 150 years ago a ten-year-old boy from a noble family in England lost his sight in an accident. The boy, William Montague Dyke, didn’t let his disability control his life. As a young man, he graduated with honors from an English university...
Deacon Donald CoxOn this Fourth Sunday of Lent, our first reading (1 Sm 16:1B, 6-7, 10-13A) details how God called David to be King of Israel. Prior to that calling, David tended the sheep for his father, Jesse. Tending sheep was certainly a needed and worthwhile...
In the early 1930s, there was a French pilot flying across the Sahara Desert in Africa who had to make an emergency landing, wrecking his plane in the process. He was quite fortunate in that a tribe of Bedouins, or desert dwellers, was near by. They...
Deacon Gregory WebsterThis month I was fortunate to attend the largest analytical chemistry conference in the United States. The Pittsburgh conference, or “Pittcon” as it is referred too, is so big that only a few cities have convention facilities large enough to handle...
There is a stanza in the ancient hymn Dies Irae (Day of wrath) of all hymns that reminds us of the core message of the gospel narrative (Jn 4:5-42) for the Third Sunday of Lent. Quaerens me sedisti lassus, Redimisti Crucem passus, tantus labor non...