WE’VE ALL HEARD the old saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Today’s readings serve as a reminder of just how true this saying is. From Adam and Eve, through the Babylonian Exile, to the Crucifixion and on down to our very time, humanity’s relationship with God has been a true love story, involving people that change and a Love that does not.
Recently, I heard an interview with the author and illustrator of a newly released children’s book and got that familiar “I’ve got to have that book” feeling.
Through the years, there is one question that I’ve come to expect: “Father, is it a sin if…” followed by some particular situation.
Lenten season I decide to read a book that I think will help me observe the season better. This year, I picked a beauty. It is Jesuit Father Michael Gallagher’s “The Human Poetry of Faith: A Spiritual Guide to Life” (New York, Paulist Press, 2003, pp. 142, $12.95). Father Gallagher deals with problems that have been on my mind for years.
After a brief explanation of why people should go to confession – “because we are all sinners” – the pope listed 30 key questions to reflect on as part of making an examination of conscience and being able to “confess well.”
Some months after my son-in-law, Rob Susil, died, a longtime friend asked me in a gentle but point-blank way, “Are you still fighting God?”
This is my Lenten reflection: We can never be strangers. We all are part of God’s family.
Retired Auxiliary Bishop Emil A. Wcela of Rockville Centre, N.Y., prays over two inmates at the end of an Ash Wednesday Mass at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead, L.I., Feb. 18.
By Father James Rodriguez ONCE AGAIN, AS A Church we have undertaken these 40 days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, walking with our Lord on the way to Calvary. It seems as if our Christmas celebration is barely over before we are called to commemorate the Passion, yet truly both events point to the same […]
Above, Msgr. Alfred LoPinto, executive director of Catholic Charities, joined Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio in distributing ashes at St. James Cathedral-Basilica in Downtown Brooklyn. Below, Msgr. Joseph Grimaldi, episcopal vicar for Brooklyn, distributes ashes at a Mass with diocesan employees at The Chancery office building in Park Slope. Lent began a 40-day time of penance and […]
