This is what the Pasch of the Lord accomplishes: it motivates us to move forward, to leave behind our sense of defeat, to roll away the stone of the tombs in which we often imprison our hope, and to look with confidence to the future.

In these Lenten and Easter days in which the church celebrates a man whose divinity was revealed in his willingness to sacrifice everything for love, consider "Sweeney Todd" to be that story’s dark, demonic twin.

If irony is the opposite of what one might expect, then nothing is more ironic than God.

Many young Catholics I know were compelled to be confirmed by family members who felt the sacrament was important. My situation was the opposite—I was confirmed of my own volition.

For the early church, the reality of the Resurrection was central, not only in the structure of the liturgical celebration, but also in the pattern of the liturgical year. Easter was the greatest feast of the whole year.