GONE FISHING

“I am going fishing” Peter says. He says this after the Resurrection of Jesus.... after the Empty Tomb, after the appearance in the Upper Room twice... To be clear, Peter’s not planning a night out…

SOMETHING’S MISSING

Another thing on the list of bizarre things for us Catholics during this whole crazy time we’re living with (on a pretty lengthy list already) is at the sign of peace. After hearing the words…

HOPE FOR THE DOWNCAST

Between different spiritual direction sessions, meetings, calls, one consistent thing I’ve been hearing a lot is that a lot of people are really struggling with negative and pessimistic thoughts. Which is totally understandable. Today for…

EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED

The other day, a former high school English teacher of mine had sent me a picture that had appeared in a bunch of different newspapers around the world. It was from South America in a…

FEARFUL YET OVERJOYED

Yesterday a friend was describing what a difficult Easter Sunday this was for her. As a faithful Catholic Christian, she was happy with the joy of Easter coming after what probably all of us could…

WITH APOLOGIES TO DR SEUSS

Over the last few weeks, as this thing went from social distancing, to pretty much being quarantined or under house arrest, to recognizing that this was going to be a really weird Easter - I…

NO GREATER LOVE

A story was told some years ago that after a forest fire at a National Park, some park rangers made their trek up a mountain to assess the inferno’s damage. As they walked, a ranger…

THE HARDEST PART OF PRIESTHOOD

“What’s the hardest thing about being a priest?” It’s a question that’s come up more times in the last few years than in my earliest years of priesthood – perhaps because of the negativity we’ve…