Category: Advancing the Kingdom

In St. John’s Gospel, Nathaniel asks Philip if any good can come out of Nazareth. Would his twenty-first century counterpart express the same sentiment about the Big Apple? If so, a contemporary Philip would likely reply with enthusiasm: “Come and see”. We are invited to…

Ours is a world of proliferating “ologies”. ‘Aetiology’, ‘cognitology’, and ‘onomasiology’ are a few new ones for me. Recently two ‘ologies’ appeared linked in a sentence I read that now unsettles my memory: “Technology defines ontology”. The word ‘technology’ is well understood; not so with…

Does anyone else wonder where surnames have gone? Today it seems that no one has, or at least uses, his last name. The practice of addressing a stranger by his first name – regardless of his age or ‘station in life’ (to use a superannuated…

On that wondrous night two millennia ago what did it signify, that jubilant cry of the heavenly host when, announcing the birth of the Savior, they sang “Glory to God in highest”? What is glory? What has it to do with God? How does one…

Either because of or in spite of having so many children the man who raised my siblings and me rarely expressed annoyance. His two pet-peeves which I recall were the abuse of the first person pronoun in that grammatical aberration: “between you and I” and…

As the turbulent calendar year 2020 draws to a close many in our nation this Thanksgiving will be thinking twice about what blessings there are for which to be grateful. Rampant violence, the pandemic, lockdowns, economic duress, et ceteracertainly call into question our national wellbeing.…

Was there ever a time when there was no time? To contemplate this oxymoron – addressed by St. Augustine in his City of God – is to bring to mind our belief that in some mysterious way all of us are in God’s hands. Perhaps…

Have you ever wondered when and how the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans transmogrified from theology to mythology? This question occurred to me recently as I was helping a grandson prepare for his Confirmation. The normal pre-sacrament courses are now virtual and…

 “Sing for your supper …  songbirds always eat”. This lyric from the Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical, “The Boys from Syracuse” borrows from the ‘Little Tommy Tucker’ nursery rhyme first published in 1744. Its association with singing and children brings to mind a fund recently…

“Liberty, for what? Fools, for what? Let me have a little more time, you work diligently, and I will soon take complete care of you; I will insure you against all risks (except against the loss of liberty, of course); I will marry you off,…