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Since one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more authentic, I admit that the fun title for this post came from a little framed art piece I spotted in the aisles of JoAnn Fabrics. While I would prefer to confess my inspiration springs from all that Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare I’ve been poring over lately (NOT!) or the endless hours minutes spent in daily prayer and reflection… I’m certain God continues to seek this undeserving soul’s attention. And He will undoubtedly work with what He has. Sometimes that’s the clearance section of a big-box fabric store. The pithy little saying painted on a rustic white-washed backdrop gave me a chuckle, not simply because they expected some schmuck to shell out $10 for a farmhouse chic clearance item, but because it struck a chord. I tend to...

For weeks I prayed and prepared.  I taught my youngest how to address him. I wiped baseboards and dusted chandeliers.  I planned a menu that didn’t overestimate my cooking abilities but seemed worthy of the extraordinarily special guest.  I polished silver and curated a jazz playlist just hours before I set out the tray of Brie cheese and fig preserves for a simple yet not-so-everyday appetizer. It started out just as I had hoped.  We sipped our wine and laughed together in the usual get-acquainted rhythms.  Our youngest son child sat cozily at our kitchen bar tucked between our Bishop, visiting our home for the first time, and one of our dear priest friends. Then, it happened. The child leaned forward and stuck out his little tongue (in good Communion form, I will...

I open our New Year’s Eve late night Mass (11:15 PM) with the observation that we begin Mass in one year and end in the next. New Year’s Eve highlights the mysterious passage between years. In a way I suppose it is no more mysterious than the passage from Thursday to Friday or from 10:00 AM to 10:01 AM. In one sense, nothing could be simpler than time. I might ask you, “What time is it?” You might reply, “It’s 1:15.” Simple! But time has mysteries about it. What is time? Some say it’s merely a measure of change. But that doesn’t really make a lot of sense because change doesn’t occur at a steady pace at all. Some say it’s just another way of measuring distance in the space-time continuum. Time and distance are certainly related. To look out at the stars at night is to look into the past; i...

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Kids, be John Mara. Don’t be Dan Snyder. Today’s lesson in character comes from the annual NFL bloodbath when teams fire their failing coaches the day after the season ends. The New York Giants fired their head coach, the Washington Redskins their president, having fired their coach in mid-season. The Giants stumbled through two seasons with head coach Pat Shurmur. They won 9 games and lost 23. They did worse the second season than they did the first. That wasn’t all his fault. The general manager Dave Gettleman made some bone-headed moves (and the team still suffered the effects of his incompetent predecessor), some new players didn’t play as well as expected, some key players got injured. His players supported him, and sometimes the Giants looked like a really good team. But he didn’t do...

[embedded content] Author AJ Jacobs shows how the coffee cup lid was perfectly designed to give you a full sensory experience while drinking.

January 1 is the Solemnity (Holy Day) of Mary, Mother of God.  To call Mary the “Mother of God” must not be understood as a claim for Mary’s motherhood of divinity itself, but in the sense that Mary was mother of Jesus, who is truly God.  The Council of Ephesus in 431—long before the schisms with the Eastern churches and the Protestants—proclaimed “Mother of God” a theologically correct title for Mary.  So far from being a cause of division, the common confession of Mary as “Mother of God” should unite all Christians, and distinguish Christian orthodoxy from various confusions of it, such as Arianism (the denial that Jesus was God) or Nestorianism (in which Mary mothers only the human nature of Jesus but not his whole person). Two themes are present in the Readings for this ...

“My soul takes pleasure in three things, and they are beautiful in the sight of the Lord and of men; agreement between brothers, friendship between neighbors, and a wife and a husband who live in harmony.”Sirach Among these three beautiful things, the third perhaps stands out as most notable and worthy of honor and remembrance: when a wife and husband live in harmony. But what exactly is living in harmony? Surely there are degrees, and there can still be real harmony even in a relationship regularly dogged by misunderstanding and dissension. It’s not uncommon that young newlyweds resolve to have a better marriage than those they have seen up close. And perhaps this is fitting. Yet often a husband and wife, sometimes sooner and sometimes later, come to a more nuanced view of the complexitie...

Joliet, Ill., Dec 28, 2019 / 09:20 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Joliet announced Friday that Bishop Daniel Conlon will take a medical leave of absence from leadership of the Illinois diocese. During Conlon’s absence, “Bishop Richard E. Pates, Bishop Emeritus of Des Moines, will serve as Apostolic Administrator of the diocese,” the diocese said in a Dec. 27 statement. “Bishop Conlon expresses his deep affection for the clergy, religious and laity of the Diocese of Joliet and will keep them in his prayers during his time away. He also asks for their prayers,” the statement added. The diocese did not say what health problems Conlon is facing. Conlon, 71, has been Joliet’s bishop since 2011. From 2002 until 2011 he was Bishop of Steubenville, and before that a priest in the Archdiocese of Steuben...

Something at Christmas urges me (a man of many words) to write of holy silence. Perhaps it is due to one of the great Christmas antiphons, which speaks of the birth of Christ as a magnum mysterium (a great mystery). During Mass recently, the words of Zechariah came to my mind: Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord … Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling (Zechariah 2:11, 13). There is a common idiom: “Words fail me.” It is in this context that we can best understand God’s call to fall silent before the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation. Notice in the passage above that the call to silence follows the call to “sing and rejoice.” Is there a difference between singing and rejo...