Category: Advancing the Kingdom

The ubiquitous presence of cell phones and the never dormant social media prompt this question.  Does the time so many of us spend gazing at electronic screens serve the purpose of recreation or of distraction?  Put more generally, for which of these two purposes do…

On this national Independence Day it is appropriate for us inhabitants of the U.S.A. to reflect on the nature of freedom. Is our freedom ‘freedom from’ or ‘freedom for’?  From and for.  How can two prepositions so similar in orthography differ so in implication? Even…

Have our post-enlightenment minds slipped so deeply and so inconspicuously into some cultural amnesia that we are no longer accepting of, or even mindful of, what our predecessors believed? Do we flatter ourselves with the hubristic presumption that because we create truth we understand and…

Mystery surrounds us, but do we honor it?  As with grace, do we recognize it as a gift we can either accept or decline? For those of us whose powers of logic have been secularized, it is perhaps understandable that we tend to dismiss the…

Irony intrigues. Isn’t it curious how a commonplace expression can mean something contrary to its intended significance? “Shameless behavior”, for instance, should mean conduct above reproach. However, it ironically is interpreted as conduct full of shame. “Nothing’s the matter” is another phrase inviting such reflection.…

“Nihil mihi deerit”. There are alternate English renditions of St. Jerome’s translation of the opening verse of Psalm 23 (22). Most readers will recognize “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want”. Others will be familiar with “The Lord is my shepherd I shall…

“They grew as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who had not believed in the Lord, their God. They rejected his statutes, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the warnings he had given them. They followed emptiness and became empty.” (2 Kings: 17) The…

What fecund ambiguity!   Clearly, the phrase ‘path of totality’ was used unambiguously earlier this week as the media covered the trajectory of the moon’s shadow over a large swath of our nation and millions of viewers witnessed the total blackout of the sun. But an…

We met in sixth grade.  I was a new kid in the school and felt very much out of place. Maybe it was his gentle manner, or that he was the oldest in the class. Whatever the reason, in his quiet and unobtrusive way Kyle…

Two passages in the New Testament – one at the beginning and the other at the end of Jesus’ public ministry – illustrate a foundational tenet in Catholic philanthropy. The first is Jesus’ proclamation soon after his baptism by John: “The time is fulfilled, and…