Have you ever returned to a book that you enjoyed as a younger reader? The experience can be enjoyable, disappointing and surprising, all at once. Last month, in a book club at a local Jesuit parish, I reminded the group that our next selection would be Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly. Mr. Blue! exclaimed one woman. I read that when I was in high school and loved it!

"A tamale, please, and a cup of atole,” I said to the Mexican woman on East 116th Street, in the heart of Spanish Harlem. It was 7:45 a.m. on a weekday morning, and people were headed toward the subway to get to work. The woman was standing beneath a blue and white umbrella that shielded

A subway ride marks the beginning of my work days at America, and given the diversity of the nearly four million passengers who use New York City’s subway system each day, it offers an ever-varying picture of humanity. For commuters like me, the actual ride does not begin on the subway car its

The late Pope John Paul II frequently called for a “new evangelization,” by which he meant the renewed preaching of the Gospel in regions long assumed to be Christian, like Europe and the Americas. Pope Benedict XVI continues these efforts. On Sept. 29, presidents of the 34 European epis

"Getting out of prison, I had no job and no place to go, so I ended up in a shelter in Brooklyn,” said José Carrero. A recent graduate of the Ready, Willing & Able program of the Doe Fund, which helps homeless people become independent, José spoke these words at its annual graduatio

"When you are old, another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish to go” (Jn 21:18). So Jesus prophesied St. Peter’s death in old age. The saying, however, has always had a gnomic quality for me, as if it applied in some sense to us all. No exegete I have read has ever ind