It was Wednesday, the day the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (R.C.I.A.) meets at my parish. At the start of each session, we engage in a modified Lectio Divina. This past Holy Week, we were reading the Gospel about the two disciples walking to Emmaus. We focused in on how the disciples knew it was Jesus that they had asked “to stay with us.”
While many thousands of teens in the Diocese of Brooklyn will spend a portion of their summer descending upon the famed Queens Center Mall on Queens Boulevard, some will go just a few steps further. A few steps further toward greatness …
My fingers were white-knuckled tight, anxiously gripping the steering wheel as I drove through the hailstorm tornado. Driving eastbound on Interstate 84 through Danbury, Conn., on Tuesday afternoon, May 15, shortly before 5 p.m., I was heading to Southbury, some 15 miles further east.
Our Memorial Day was originally known as “Decoration Day,” an opportunity to decorate many graves of the over 600,000 men who died in the Civil War. It was, by far, our nation’s costliest war in terms of human life, about two percent of the entire population. Today, that would translate into 6.5 million people. Memorial Day honors all who have died in military service to our country since its inception. But why should we, as a nation and as Catholics, remember something so … grim?
My 95-year-old mother has severe dementia. The disease has robbed her of the ability to do so many things she used to fully appreciate in her life. … But I thank God every day that she is being cared for by compassionate staff in an excellent facility.
As a divorced/annulled woman, who is now married to the most wonderful husband, I remember trying to conceive without success. … It was difficult. I had lost all hope for a long time.
“Be known for your courtesy: It alone can make you worthy of praise. Courtesy is the best part of culture, a kind of enchantment and it wins the goodwill of all, just as rudeness wins only scorn and universal annoyance.
On April 19, the new legislature of the National Assembly, the Cuban parliament, after declaring itself officially in session, elected the new State Council, and Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez as its president, who in Cuba is the chief of state and is also president of the Council of Ministers.
“You want to know why I don’t go to church anymore, look at the front page of the New York Post!” I was taken aback as a groom I was preparing for marriage called me and said that to me. I had not read the Post, so I asked him to hold on for a moment and I asked a retired priest I was living with for his copy.
Pope Francis has my admiration because I hear the voice of love speaking through him. He always stresses God’s infinite mercy.
