“Jesus Christ...There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”  How comfortable are we saying that in…

          Why are you troubled? In tonight's Gospel passage, Jesus asks that question in a very particular context.  Jesus had been unjustly tried, horrifically tortured, even more grotesquely crucified, abandoned, and left dead in a…

Have you ever noticed how fascinated people are, to the point that it sometimes becomes headline news when someone famous becomes Catholic?   In our celebrity-obsessed culture, that might not be surprising.  Movie producers will go…

One of the things that I've learned working with college students over the past 16 years is how often they are ahead of the rest of the culture and the rest of the world.  In…

We know this story. We've heard it, variations of it, some of us many, many times. Yet you can feel something different.  How transcendent is the proclamation of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ,…

This Sunday marks a shift in the season of Lent.  We start to hear and feel the intensity in the scriptures being proclaimed at Masses starting today of Jesus fixing his eyes on the hills…

Believe it or not, this talk was a lot harder for me to prepare than I ever imagined it would be when I agreed to talk a few months ago.  Mainly because I'm so used…

A 19-year-old who was homeless, living in Hawaii, describes the night his entire life changed.  He was finished working for the night at one of the Bubba Gump-chain restaurants on the island and was waiting…