”I told him that women from the Amazon and North America are making this path of discernment for the ministry of women in the church and [about] the need to advance in recognizing the diaconal service that we provide to the church.”

An old teacher once said, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” She was right. An even older Jesuit once said, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” He was right, too.

Birth and death bookend our temporal experience, but we are called to fill everything between them with love and mercy and decency, not cling to fantasies of a fraudulent eternity.

I have heard it said that if the public could see the physical images of violence after a shooting, perhaps we would all be more fervent in our demand for radical change. I have seen it. Must I make you look, too?

The guys caught up in gang violence were yearning for respect, as all people deserve, and gaining a grasp on their perspective was God’s lesson for me.

’The air was still. The silence felt like a cloak enfolding the room.‘