A number of years ago, I belonged to a parish that brought Communion to a local hospital each Sunday. One Sunday, as I approached one of the rooms and looked in, all I could see were white sheets covering a mound of pillows. Coming around the bed, I discovered a small, emaciated woman in a fetal pos

I open the gray metal box. Where others keep grandma’s opal from Australia or silver certificates, I keep one hand-written letter. In my father’s unique penmanship, the long “y” of sorry reaches down and captures a memory: My dear daughter, ...what happened long ago.... It i

One of the Little Sisters of the Gospel who is a chaplain at a prison on Rikers Island in New York City asked me to say the Sunday Mass there on what turned out to be a bitterly cold afternoon. Part of me was glad to go; it would reconnect me with my own past years of chaplaincy work there. That exp

"When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run half of her swift course, your all powerful word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven from the royal throne” (Wis 18:14-15) “...and Mary gave birth to a son, her first born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a ma

We are pilgrim people, marching through time but anchored in eternity. We are waiting for a new life to unfold as we celebrate a life that we already own. This is our Christian existence. The gift of hope keeps our eyes on the future; that same hope secures our existence here and now. Hope has an im

This year is the 50th anniversary of the death of Daniel A. Lord, S.J. (1888-1955), one of the best-known American Jesuits of the last century. Though now forgotten by many, Lord was a larger-than-life figure in the seemingly confident, cohesive preconciliar church in America. Catholics, especially