VIEWS

Advent, the four-week period preceding Christmas, is a time to slow down as we wait in hopeful expectation for Christ’s coming. It’s a time to take stock of what’s important in our lives, casting away extra commitments and wasted energy we’ve added throughout the year.

It’s that time of year when Americans turn their hearts toward home and prepare for a Thanksgiving feast, one that brings us around the table to celebrate.

I was in the middle of a root canal when I began to think about gratitude.

In the earliest centuries of the Christian faith, the rite of Baptism with its powerful gestures, words and symbolism had a strong emphasis on conversion, a radical reorientation of one’s whole life away from sin and toward God.

The wind whipped our faces and a steady rain fell as we stood aboard the simple fishing boat that had set sail on the Sea of Galilee.

Any pilgrim arriving before St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome immediately feels a sense of joy and majesty, before the immense proportions and exceptional quality of the art and architecture.

A favorite Biblical image used by the Church Fathers to describe the fragility and complexity of human life is that of a potter working with clay.

Satan preys upon human weakness and works to undermine the Church from within. He wants nothing more than for you and me to give up all hope.

The Latin root of digital actually means “pertaining to the fingers.” God made us and knows we humans have a need to be touched and thereby loved.

According to a Greek legend, Damocles, from the court of the tyrant ruler of Syracuse, voiced his desire to have the riches and pleasures of the king just for one day. And so, the next day, Damocles was led into the palace, and all the servants were bidden to treat him as their master.