Every Sunday before 9:00 A.M., a long line of cars snakes down a tree-lined road north of Baltimore, Md. In the Chapel of a Carmelite Monastery, a diverse congregation gathers for liturgy. Retired people, women religious, former priests and sisters, young adults with little children and some teenage
I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book.
Pablo and Dolores García were the fourth couple to approach me after the parish mission to ask where they could find a copy of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises in Spanish. I had to explain that the little manual was not meant to be read like a normal book, but rather was to be use
Memory Comes Back
Many thanks to Patricia Kossmann for calling attention to the 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Dec. 9 of this year.
During the seasons of his Life Is Worth Living television series, the bishop would periodically decamp across the
The Great Seal of the United States, reproduced on the dollar bill, has a mediocre design but an upbeat message. One side shows a bald eagle grasping in its talons arrows of war and an olive branch of peace. The reverse side pictures an unfinished pyramid surmounted by a great eye that represents di
Last Sunday evening I had one of the more remarkable telephone conversations of my life. At first I simply heard a man’s cultured voice, with a smooth and soft foreign accent, very politely say, “Father Gelson?” “Yes.” “Father, do you remember a scouting trip to D