Something you don’t hear every day from a Jesuit: I’m here to pick up a cassock for my trip to Lourdes.

“Students who understood very little of his lectures told me that they attended because they ‘felt better’ about themselves in his presence. ‘This is a professor to whom I can confess,’ one said.”

My family and my church have been instrumental in helping me to discover that I am part of something a whole lot larger than just me. Being one of many is really who I am at my core.

The most startling fact about Edwin O'Connor's life was its brevity The acclaimed author of such mid-century Irish and Catholic classics as 'The Last Hurrah' and 'The Edge of Sadness' seemed a fit and healthy man. Yet he died when he was just 49 in 1968.

Ignatian spirituality offers a different wisdom on vocation. It counsels us to discover our personal calling by aligning our gifts and aspirations with what we see as the deepest needs of our world.

Ron Hansen’s new novel is a dollop of sweet cream, an entertainment, a sip of champagne, a screwball comedy, a romp, a bauble, a love letter to Nebraska.

It is easy to overlook Joseph, much as we overlook those millions of men and women who do their work quietly and well, without the least fanfare.

The novelist Iris Murdoch died only two years ago at the age of 79, but already a memoir, film and biography have appeared to preserve her memory for devoted fans and to introduce her to new audiences. In Iris Murdoch: A Life, Peter J. Conradi offers a wide-ranging look at the life of a writer and philosopher who had a remarkable “hunger for the spiritual in a post-theistic age.”

Without dismissing the importance of other leaders in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, it is fair to say that Dorothy Day remains, at the dawn of the new millennium, the radical conscience of American Catholicism.

While the Super Bowl is a distant memory (in the age of day-trading, instant e-mails and online newspapers, anything that took place more than a month ago is a distant memory), it is by no means too late to talk about a book and a man intimately connected to championship football games.