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In today’s Gospel the Lord is teaching us, by His grace, to break the cycle of hatred and retribution. When someone harms me I may well become angry, and in my anger seek to get back at the offender. If I do that, though, then Satan has earned a second victory and brought the anger and retribution to a higher level. Most likely, the one who originally harmed me will then take exception to my retribution and try to inflict more harm on me. And so the cycle continues and escalates. Satan loves this. Break the cycle. The Lord has dispatched us onto the field to turn the game around and break this cycle of retribution and hatred. The “play” He wants us to execute is the “it ends with me” play. Don’t play on Satan’s team. To hate those who hate me, to get back at those who harm me, is to work f...

Abbot Hugh Allan has an interesting pastorship. Saying Mass, of course, is the highlight of his visits, which include visits with local Catholics and enjoying the expansive scenery and wildlife. (Abbot Hugh Allan) K.V. Turley LONDON — The Catholic Church in the British Overseas Territories of the southern Atlantic Ocean is governed by two ecclesiastical jurisdictions: the Apostolic Prefecture of the Falkland Islands and the Ecclesial Mission sui iuris of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Both of these are directly responsible to the Holy See. From the 18th century onwards this large ecclesial territory was a mission field for the French and then the Spanish. In the 19th century, Irish priests came to serve the needs of Catholics on these islands. Since 2002, however, the Catholic...

I have blogged in the past about the opportunities one has to evangelize in the deep South when wearing the cassock. My favorite episode was when I stopped at the supermarket to pick up a few items. I was wearing my cassock and Benedictine scapula and as I got to the end of the aisle with the shopping cart two rather large African American ladies came around the corner. One had purple hair, big red framed sunglasses and a jazzy colored top. The other was competing with her in the peacock competition. Both were jabbering away in conversation. When they came around the corner and saw me both screamed and put their hand to their mouth. Then they started laughing together. “Are you a real priest?” the first one asked. “Yes ma’am, I sure am.” I said. “Why do you dress like that?” said the secon...

On October 9th, 1859, the first Marian apparition in the United States (since approved by the Catholic Church as “worthy of belief – although not obligatory”) occurred near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Adele Brise, a 28-year-old Belgian immigrant, was walking eleven miles home from Sunday Mass when she saw a beautiful lady with long, wavy, golden hair wearing a crown of stars and clothed in a dazzling white dress with a yellow sash around her waist. Adele fell to her knees and asked, “In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?” The Blessed Virgin Mary replied, “I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion ...

ADVERTISEMENT Sign Up for Our free email newsletters How rapidly is the universe expanding? Since Edwin Hubble first discovered in 1929 that galaxies are getting farther apart over time, allowing scientists to trace the evolution of the universe back to an initial Big Bang, astronomers have struggled to measure the exact rate of this expansion. In particular, astronomers want to determine a number called the Hubble parameter, a measurement of how fast the cosmos is expanding as we speak. The Hubble parameter tells us the age of the universe, so measuring it was a major goal for many astronomers in the latter half of the 20th century. The problem, however, is that measuring the Hubble parameter is, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite difficult. There are multiple methods for doing so, and modern ...