Of Many Things

Robert Meza is a 40-year-old Arizona state legislator. The district he represents covers portions of central Phoenix, including both middle-class areas of old Phoenix and poor ones populated by Mexican-Americans. During his first term, he heard complaints from those Mexican-American constituents abo

Since I moved to New York City a year ago, I have taken to walking after dinner around the midtown neighborhood in which I live. It’s especially glorious in the summer; the setting sun lends everything a generous glow. Winter brings early darkness, trudging and multiple layers. In the daytime,

In recent years, even at Christmastime, there has been little good news from the Holy Land, but on Nov. 19 Latin-rite Catholics in the Holy Land had reason to celebrate. That day they welcomed Bishop Fouad Twal, until recently bishop of Tunis, as coadjutor patriarch of Jerusalem. Bishop Twal, a Jord

The Catholic Worker is just around the corner from my rectory, and ever since I moved to that neighborhood on the Lower East Side, I have felt blessed by the proximity. I should really say Catholic Workers, with an s, because there are actually two Worker communities a stone’s throw from each

"Spots of time" is what the poet William Wordsworth called those places that imprint themselves so deeply into our minds that simply remembering them can lift our hearts – in other words, holy places. I thought about that phrase as I left Kentucky last month after visiting the Abbey of Get

"Here today, gone tomorrow.” That familiar saying can apply to many things, including buildings and rare architectural artifacts. In a city like New York, buildings are torn down and replaced in a matter of months, their original accompanying artifacts lost. With this destruction of older

Last week I had the opportunity to see the newest Broadway production of the musical “Sweeney Todd.” First performed in 1979, “Todd” unwinds the grisly tale of a barber in 19th-century England who returns to London after 20 years trapped in a prison colony on trumped-up charg

Migration is a word heard with ever greater frequency, and I heard a lot about its many aspects—mostly painful ones—during a three-day conference last June at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Representatives from Fairfield and some 20 other Jesuit institutions, including several from

Have you ever returned to a book that you enjoyed as a younger reader? The experience can be enjoyable, disappointing and surprising, all at once. Last month, in a book club at a local Jesuit parish, I reminded the group that our next selection would be Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly. Mr. Blue! exclaimed one woman. I read that when I was in high school and loved it!

"A tamale, please, and a cup of atole,” I said to the Mexican woman on East 116th Street, in the heart of Spanish Harlem. It was 7:45 a.m. on a weekday morning, and people were headed toward the subway to get to work. The woman was standing beneath a blue and white umbrella that shielded