Even in our relationships with family and friends, forgiveness can be hard to come by.

That woman is in so many parishes, right there beneath the exit sign and almost out the door, singing while the roof gets ripped off and the sky falls.

Even when events are messy and motives are questionable and hardships abound, we must trust that God’s unknowable power is at work.

Most of us are so removed from agricultural realities that we fail fully to embrace the image of chaff in today’s psalm.

Do we still believe there are “evil spirits who prowl through the world, seeking the ruin of souls,” as the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel memorably phrases it?

Before long I had tears in my eyes—and not from the uneven grooves worn into the wood by pilgrims’ knees. Something about the physical discomfort helped me to focus on the much greater pain Jesus had felt on those same stairs.