Punctuation can make a world of difference in our understanding of written communication. Consider, for example, the following sentences: “Let’s eat, Uncle Larry!” and “Let’s eat Uncle Larry!”Each sentence is composed of the same words. But a single punctuation ma

My first days as a father in the I.C.U.

My children claim it is often hard to get my attention. I am apt to wander in and out of conversations. I’m often late and easily distracted. I can spend too much time working and not enough time with my family. But when it comes to the big things, when my children are lost or hurt or heading

It is a Sunday morning in 1992, and I am 10 years old and visiting relatives in the midwest. We head to church, pile into a pew, sit, stand and then sing the entrance hymn at Mass. I happen to look up from my missalette just as two girls who are about my age walk up the aisle; they are wea

For our family, adoption has come to mean much more than what we thought it did on that Sunday afternoon.

I watch for it every Easter vigil, and every Easter vigil it happens—this Easter vigil right in front of me where I sat in the second row of the chapel expressly to see it; and once again I nearly burst into tears, because it is so beautiful and subtle and gentle and heartrending and amazing,