Preachers at Christmas often emphasize the lowliness of the Christ Child’s birth. This pattern of inversion – turning everything upside-down – continues throughout the public ministry of the Lord Jesus and reaches its climax in His death and resurrection.
A British department store is creating a buzz this Christmas after teaming with Age UK, a charity for senior citizens, to raise funds and awareness of the scourge of loneliness among the elderly today.
WE AMERICAN CATHOLICS are, in the main, notoriously uninterested in our own history. So it likely escaped the notice of many that Dec. 3 marked the bicentenary of the death of Archbishop John Carroll, one of the greatest who ever lived among us.
AS THE YEAR of Mercy began, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I remembered the popular parable: the prodigal son. Its graphic depiction of the younger son’s profligate behavior, the depth of his misery groveling for scraps among pigs, and the father’s magnanimous welcome with rings, robe, sandals and feast leave little unsaid about the father’s boundless mercy. However, the character who intrigues me is the older brother.
Pope Francis has a “burning desire” during this special Jubilee Year. He wants us to reflect on and practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy so that we may “enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy.”
I’ve evolved through various stages of Marian devotion in my life. … Nevertheless, even today I struggle to know her.
IT’S BEEN A good reading year and I highly recommend the following to the readers on your Christmas (not “holiday”) shopping list.
St. Catharine of Alexandria School, Borough Park, alumnus Nicholas Fialo reflects on the ministry of the Sisters of the Religious Sacred Heart of Mary, who are leaving the parish after 110 years of service.
After the recent attacks on Paris, what happens next? What kind of world do we want to live in?
I remember being 12 and watching my country bomb Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. I remember wondering if girls like me in Baghdad were looking up at the fire in the sky from homes like mine, wondering if they were going to be all right.
For the past two weeks, I have been writing about the meaning and process of marriage annulments. How does this play out in the Diocese of Brooklyn?
