The Eucharist is the summit of our faith, in which the entire story of our salvation is made real in a miraculous and powerful way. The Roman Missal calls Holy Eucharist the “Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is received; the memory of his Passion is renewed; the mind is filled with grace; and a pledge of…

During my high school years, I lived with my grandmother Matilde. Sunday night was a sacred time when she would always take me to church. Back then, I lived in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and we had two options to go to Mass: Our Lady of the Rosary Church, three blocks away, or…

Sidewalk chalk, that staple of summer, is easy to spot on an early morning walk. You may be tempted to start skipping over the loosely drawn squares of some little person’s hopscotch course. Or, since this chalk often comes in pastel hues, it’s hard to create a convincing Elmo, but an artist has given it…

The Sufi mystic Rumi once lamented: “I have lived too long where I can be reached!” That was twelve hundred years ago, long before cell phones, the internet, computers, and social media. Today, most of us live where we can be reached all the time. While this has some huge upsides, it also has a…

I don’t run into shepherds very often, but a few years ago, I ran into a shepherd (via Google) by the name of Kim Goodling. She and her husband live in Vermont and run a large farm with a lot of livestock, including a flock of sheep. On her blog, Kim Goodling wrote about what…

Even though the Bible was written ages ago, its pages always have meanings and messages for us today. Our challenge is to find connections between the text of yesterday and the ‘today’ of our lives. There are five parts to lectio divina – holy reading – which is an ancient way of praying with Scripture.…

I must have skipped the chapter in my ‘how to parent’ instruction manual where it talked about weddings. Not my wedding, of course, but all the weddings of my kids, the friends of my kids and the kids of my friends. For me, the year 2024 is turning into a banner year for nuptials, including…

As I’m sitting in the chapel, I hear the clock in the sacristy ticking in the silence. The tick of every second is the ever-fleeting present leading to the next moment – the future St Teresa of Kolkata’s words come to mind, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let…

We live this life “mourning and weeping in a valley of tears.” This was part of a prayer my parents prayed every day of their adult lives, as did many others in their generation. In the light of contemporary sensitivities (and one-sided spiritualities), this might sound morbid. Are we to understand our lives as time…

In the second book of his Dialogues, Pope Gregory the Great tells of the holiness of St Benedict, whose memorial is celebrated on the 11th day of July. We learn that Benedict lived for three years in Subiaco, some 40 miles outside of Rome. He fled the ancient city that was self-destructing in its moral…