by Fr. Jim Chern
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
In the gospels we heard on Monday and Tuesday of this week, in the background (but not too far in the background) has been the betrayal of Judas. St. John in the Gospel we heard…
So many things happen in that Upper Room at the Last Supper that the Church breaks up the accounts of that event. We will hear later this week of those foundational sacramental moments with the…
It dawned on me that I’ve not encountered this Gospel passage at Mass - in at least 25 years. This passage is only proclaimed (I believe) on the Monday of Holy Week. Traditionally in our…
Allow me to state the obvious - this is weird. Live streaming Masses from the Newman Catholic Center here at Montclair State has been weird. Seeing a box of palm branches arrive and remembering our…