One of the most famous and influential justices of the U. S. Supreme Court was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who served on the Court for thirty years at the beginning of the 20th century. He was known for his brilliant mind—and also for being rather absent...
This side of heaven, many of us have been given the gift of five senses to encounter the world. If you can’t remember them, they are: touch, smell, taste, hear, and see. For a moment, however, imagine what life would be like if our first four...
It is said that what sells newspapers is bad news. Too often preachers as well focus on all that’s bad in our world. I must confess that I have fallen into that trap myself. And candidates for political office use that device when campaigning...
There’s a story about a sailor who was shipwrecked on a beautiful but primitive island in the South Seas. The natives picked him up off the beach, carried him on their shoulders to their village, and placed him on a crude throne. As the man slowly...
Years ago a woman who had been received into the Catholic Church wandered into an Episcopalian church by mistake on a Saturday afternoon a few months later. The Episcopalian, or Anglican church, as it’s called in England, came into existence back in...
Back in the late 1700s a man named John Newton, a man committed to destroy the Christian faith and an alcoholic libertine, was by the grace of God, rescued, restored, healed, and given the sight to see what he was and what God wanted him to be. He...
Jesus said, Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant, whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. As profound as that statement is, we need to understand exactly what Jesus means when He uses the words servant and...
This weekend the Church celebrates the feast of the Epiphany. The Gospel that the Church uses at Mass on this feast day is always the same, Matthew 2:1-12. And obviously this is where we find the story of the Star of Bethlehem and the visit by the...
