The Bible. It’s literally the number one bestseller of books for all of human history. It is the grounding text of our Catholic faith. We believe and profess that it is the very Word of God. But it’s also an enormously large book running for thousands of pages with a...
As a Midwesterner, I know well the importance of milk. In the novitiate, we had an impressive excel chart to gauge the interest and preference of each of the novices in several different types of milk. Would we buy skim (no), 1% (not that either), 2% (some), or whole...
What’s our purpose in life? Jesus’ words in the Gospel today give us a good place to start. Matthew Zurcher, SJ, reflects on finding purpose by focusing on others, as God does. Based on the readings for Sunday, January 23, 2022. Looking for purpose? Today,...
“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.” – Matthew 9:9bre That’s it? That’s all it took? Two words from Jesus, “follow me”, and Matthew followed....
In her 2004 book Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit presents a compelling model of humanity in crisis. In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, she recounts, individual people rose above their differences and formed the communities necessary to sustain...
Smartphone notifications often make me feel like a marionette, like I’m attached to a thousand strings pulling at me all at once. Text messages, phone calls, emails, and social media alerts seem to be endless, leading some recent researchers to point out that these...
In his first public miracle, Jesus quietly provides for the needs of the hosts at the wedding at Cana. Christopher Smith, SJ, reflects on the ways that Jesus similarly provides for us, sometimes when we aren’t even aware of it. Based on the readings for Sunday,...
This is the sixth installment of A Deacon’s Diary. In the fifth installment, strange dreams kept waking Steve up. I. She said to me: You’re the one who’ll come and put the coins on the eyes of the dead. It was almost the darkest day of the year. I was in the middle...
“Firma aquí.” “Sign here.” I glanced over the document written in Spanish legalese. “Secuestro” (“kidnapping”) and “rescate” (“ransom”) jumped off the page. My eyes bulged and my pulse quickened. Only three days earlier I had professed my first vows in Los Angeles;...
Each day I am at Belize Central Prison, I pray a Hail Mary during my walk from the youth facility to the rehabilitation center.1 Sometimes, I pray more than one. But at the very least, as soon as I part ways with Ian, my fellow Jesuit regent and companion, “Hail...
