The image on the slide screen was cavernous and beckoning. As the gathering in the San Pedro chapel took in the translucent greens and blues of the watercolor, we heard its artist, Sister Doris Klein, C.S.A., offer these words: “In the cave of our hearts…in the fabric...
I personally know a family whose most meaningful Christmas truly embraced its spirit. [In 1986 this family thought of a needy family in their congregation that was struggling just to survive.] The parents and their two children discussed together how to help this...
Sometimes joy is compounded of many elements: a touch of sadness, a whimper of pain, a harsh word tenderly held until all its arrogance dies, the casting of the eye into the face that understands, the clasp of a hand that holds, then releases, a murmur of tenderness...
He who speaks to us in Advent…knows the wilderness into which we have wandered, and the wildness of the world we have on our hands. It is precisely there we are to prepare the way of the Lord. Into the desert of this weary world we are thrust to transform and make it...
There is also a legend that Mary was not the first young woman to whom the angel came. But she was the first one to say yes. And how unsurprising it would be for a fourteen-year-old girl to refuse the angel. To be disbelieving. Or to say: “Are you sure you mean—but...
Advent is about relationships. The three-way relationship of loving God and neighbor and self is what makes us a “hallelujah from head to toe.”
What help is it to me that Mary is full of grace, if I am not also full of grace? And what help is it to me that the Father gives birth to his Son unless I, too, give birth to him? It is for this reason that God gives birth to his Son and lies in the maternity bed so...
The darkest time in the year, The poorest place in the town, Cold, and a taste of fear, Man and Woman alone, What can we hope for here? More lights than we can learn, More wealth than we can treasure, More love than we can earn, More peace than we can measure, Because...
Christmas is a time for “giving up” sin, bad habits, and selfish pleasures. Christmas is a time for “giving in” surrender to Christ, acceptance of Him as King. Christmas is a time for “giving out” real giving, not swapping.