Lead in: There was no formal school that parents could go to to learn how to be parents. You learn as you go. Each child is uniquely different and a window into the mystery of life. You grow as a parent as you embrace the calling to love your children as God’s gift....

Lead in: Consider how it was for Mary, the girl engaged to a man named Joseph. Before they were married, even though they had never been intimate, she learned she was pregnant. But then an angel appeared to her. It was through the Holy Spirit that this happened....

Lead in: Jerome Kodell, OSB, describes the situation in Matthew 11:2. John the Baptist is at a very low point in his life. Herod has thrown him into prison. Prompt: Reflect on a low point in your life when nothing seemed to be going right. How did you respond and what...

Lead in: John the Baptist is the wild man who came out of the desert, unshaven, hair down to his shoulders looking like Rambo wearing a cloak made from the hide of a camel and cinched by a leather strap tied around his waist and eating an all-natural diet of locusts...

Lead in: At a time of year made busy by the commercialization of a feast called Christmas, the Advent season provides a timeout in a busy season so that our hearts will be prepared to take in the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of a child whose life, death and...

Lead in: As we sit in the stands at a sporting event, we all cheer for our team. We want them to win. Defeat is a hard pill to swallow. Yet we see that on the cross. It’s Jesus our hero who experiences utter defeat. This is a hard pill for us to swallow. We want our...

Lead in: One day, people were standing around the temple. They were talking about how beautiful it was, the splendor of the stonework and precious jewels. Jesus said to them, “All this you’re admiring so much. There’ll come a time when every stone in that building...

Lead in: In John 2:13-22, Jesus enters the temple and sees money chargers. In today’s language, loan sharks. They had turned his Father’s house into a marketplace, what we call a shopping mall in today’s terms. Jesus drives them out of the temple with a whip He made...

Lead in: Typically, we were taught that the soul is contained within our body. Celtic spirituality understands it differently. It sees the body as being held within the soul. The soul is too expansive to be confined to the body alone. If our soul is too expansive to...

Lead in: The Message Translation of the Bible tells us that Jesus told the story of the tax man and the Pharisee to those who thought they were morally superior to the common person and looked down on them. Hence, the expression, “Walk around with your nose in the air...