The Good Word

Sister Leopoldina Burns recorded the event many years later when she was more than 65 years old Her English is a bit hard-pressed because she wrote late at night Twenty years in Hawaii and she was still working long days as a nurse A short distance from the office they entered a long narrow b

We all have our favorite gospel I like Luke for his story telling and his stress on women and the marginalized Matthew for his focus on the gentile converts John for his theology his focus on Jesus as the lsquo word rsquo of God and his play on light darkness And today rsquo s author Mark

There rsquo s something similar to ourselves in a saint something quite strange as well We heed our own humanity in a holy one but the familiar flows into the foreign It rsquo s as though in our encounter with the saint we espy two presences rather than one The person we see and another whom w

From ldquo Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare rdquo Dennis storms into a welfare office with Dee ldquo Hi I rsquo m a recovery crackhead This is my retarded sister whom I take care of I rsquo d like some welfare please rdquo From ldquo The Waitress is Getting Married rdquo Charlie ponders wha

Stephen Herrman lived his entire life in Kansas within a few miles of a small collection of limestone wood and sod houses called Liebenthal The German name means ldquo lovely valley rdquo though there was none in sight on those flat Kansas plains It was named after a village founded by

Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time B On October 11 the Catholic Church and indeed the broader world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council For some of you this date is simply an historical fact others remember it vaguely while others experienced its

September 2004 Al Tafar Nineveh Province Iraq Murph pointed to the low hills around the city Small fires had sprung up in the distance A few city lights and the fires on the hillsides burned like a tattered quilt of fallen stars ldquo It rsquo s beautiful rdquo I whispered I was not sure i

Afterward when the world was exploding around him he felt annoyed with himself for having forgotten the name of the BBC reporter who told him that his old life was over and a new darker existence was about to begin She called him at home on his private line without explaining how she got the n

I lift my hand to my mouth taking one last look at the world The berries have just passed my lips when the trumpets begin to blare rdquo It rsquo s not quite Socrates sipping the hemlock but it rsquo s probably a better known scene at least among young people It ends ldquo The frantic voic