Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins began a poem to the Lady Mary this way: “May is Mary’s month, and I / Muse at that and wonder why.” I read it in his own handwriting ...

We all remember that Genesis tells us we are created in the image of God. We’ve long thought that we are – as God is – intelligent, free, interrelated, generative, and creative. It occurred to Cardinal Carlo Martini that ...

Here’s a copyrighted saying:  Things never were as good as they used to be.

So forget the myths about America the beautiful. You can find real truth in them. For instance, this nation has set aside what was at one time more than half of all the reserved mountains, plains, and waters on the whole globe. That’s really good, even if we are now logging and oil-drilling on some of it.

And article on the rise of neopaganism in Iceland referred to “a familiar trope in the Western imagination of Christianity as the dull, staid, oppressive usurper of some ancient, organic, and somehow more meaningful precursor religion.”

Leave aside for a minute the huge faith-leap that there existed a “somehow more meaningful precursor religion.” Who knows what ancient beliefs drove people? Anyone who needs to base their life’s meaning on that myth has much more faith that I can muster.

About piety, I sometimes feel that I neither practice it nor know how to define it. And unhappily, we tend to brand those people “pious” who receive Communion only after ostentatiously genuflecting (slowing everyone) slowly bowing their heads (more slowing) and then sticking out their tongues for the Host. Enough already: keep your piety in your heart and your tongue in your mouth. 

As we come to consider and contemplate Jesus’ exodus, His Passover, we need to be aware of His courage. We learn a great deal about our own exodus when we are aware of all His courage means.

Courage is the ability to do what you need to do without being paralyzed by fear and without hesitating to wonder whether you can do it or not. Jesus was sweating with fear as the end approached, but He did not hesitate. He just prayed.

One of the most impressive events in the gospel happens at a party.

The Examen begins with asking God for light and thanking God for all our gifts. In case you imagine that you do the thanks in a second, take the assessment ...

Every now and again the thought comes to me that we don’t talk much about “virtue” any more. The next thought is ...

G.K.Chesterton wrote that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. The happiness he talked about is not merely our flourishing in a rich, free, at-peace, democratic culture and nation. It is that – but it is more...