Category: Advancing the Kingdom

Names can be powerful. Consider the names of places which but for their prominence in military annals would be unknown to most of us, names like Thermopylae, Milvian Bridge, Lepanto, and Waterloo. We hear the names of these locations and are ennobled by the recollection…

A remark made thirty years ago by a professional colleague of mine at the time still sticks in my mind.  The religious roots of his family tree had long ago atrophied and he was a member of what today would be called the “nones”. However,…

“The opposite of love is not hate, it is fear”. This helpful advice offered in a recent parish homily invites further reflection. Do opposites exist at all? Isn’t antonymy simply the absence of a designated quality in one entity as compared to another? Why is…

When we experience a setback how many times do we hear a friend who’s found something positive in the situation say:  “At least one consolation is…..”? Consolation – such a lovely word. Its Latin roots are con (with) and solacium (soothing relief or comfort in…

‘Eternal vibrancy’. Since coming across it recently I’ve been pondering this phrase. We are all familiar with the terms ‘eternal life’ or ‘life after death’ and more than likely give little thought to them other than a hope that such will be our destiny. But,…

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and…

Those of you who are advisors on our donor advised funds may have received an attractive, ecologically friendly shopping bag over the Christmas holiday, a thoughtful gift from Edward H. Robinson, NCCF’s President. The bags bear the slogan “Faith working through philanthropy”. What, you might wonder,…

This year the arrival of the feast of the Holy Family so immediately after Christmas highlights a fundamental relationship between the two truths they celebrate, almost as though the two truths are inextricably linked. The first is the reality of God’s love. At Christmas those…

Gaudeamus Igitur (‘therefore, let us rejoice’). Readers of a certain age – fewer and fewer to be sure – will recognize these words as the opening lyric of a drinking song popular among university students years ago. Today is Gaudete Sunday, the third of the…

Because she died before Pop married, my siblings and I never knew our paternal grandmother. She was something of a giant in our eyes, maybe because our acquaintance with her was limited to family lore. Born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century into…