I grew up three blocks from St. Mary, Help of Christians Church in West Allis, Wis. At the time, the parish sponsored no school, so my sister and I were enrolled in the school of a neighboring parish. But with the exception of school events, my entire religious life centered around St. Mary’s.

The season of Lent is drawing to its conclusion The hour has come We may think that the hour referred to in John rsquo s Gospel is the hour of Jesus rsquo death It is but the author gives that dreaded hour a most unexpected meaning He claims that the hour of Jesus rsquo death is really the ho

How do I love thee Let me count the ways I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightmy soul can reach when feeling out of sightfor the ends of being and ideal grace These tender words of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning reflect a bit of the all-encompassing character of human love But hu

Last Sunday we reflected on our covenant relationship with the created world Today we consider the covenant promises made to Abraham Though often referred to as ldquo The Sacrifice of Isaac rdquo the story might be better named ldquo The Testing of Abraham rdquo The first line of the first r

I never cease to be amazed at how much difficulty people have with the directive Take your places please And it is not just children who cannot seem to follow it Try to get graduate students to form a line for commencement Many of our problems stem from our inability to know our place or stay

Last Sunday we reflected on the new life that forgiveness from God and from others can offer us We saw that if we are the ones forgiven we must change our ways so that we no longer offend if we are the ones forgiving we must refrain from bringing up time and again the offense that caused us to s

The phrase ldquo Give it up rdquo signals two very different practices which are part of two equally different occasions The more recent meaning is a call to applaud a musical or dramatic performance of quality the traditional understanding is a summons to penance particularly during Lent As

We have many expressions for assuring each other that the mistakes we have made will not be held against us The most familiar include ldquo I forgive you rdquo ldquo Don rsquo t worry about it rdquo ldquo That rsquo s O K rdquo and more recently ldquo No problem rdquo These are simpl

Sometimes we may be willing to support good works as long as they are not set up in our neighborhood It may be true that property value plummets when someone opens a halfway house or a hospice around the corner This decline in value may also happen when the owners of that trendy ethnic restaurant

Job seems so pessimistic Life is a drudgery I am assigned months of misery I am filled with restlessness Will this ever end And in the next breath he declares My days are swifter than a weaver rsquo s shuttle my life is like the wind Where did the time go nbsp And that is the long and sho