Here is a link to today’s readings. Since we celebrated my mother’s birthday together last time with some cake, let me share a story. When I was still a teenager, my mother and one of my brothers and I went to...
Here is a link to today’s readings. Once a year, I bake a cake. It is for my mother’s birthday, on August 6th –the Feast of the Transfiguration—and it is always the same cake, her favorite, an Apricot Queen Cake. My...
Here is a link to today’s readings. With the Olympics in full swing, it seems appropriate to focus on the athletic metaphor that the letter to the Hebrews uses. Like Saint Paul, the writer encourages us to “rid ourselves of every...
Here is a link to today’s readings. When I was a young boy, maybe 3 or 4 years old, I remember talking with my mother as she prepared a meal. She mentioned that Jesus would come back again. Now I knew...
Here is a link to today’s readings. The beautifully written conclusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby tells us that “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded...
Here is a link to today’s readings. Abraham always upsets me in the bargaining session with God presented in today’s first reading. Even as a kid, I used to wonder, why didn’t Abraham bargain all the way down to one? It...
Here is a link to today’s readings. Sadly, there is a lot of evil in the world. My heart is heavy after hearing the news of another attack on France during Bastille Day celebrations. This follows a devastating attack that killed...
Here is a link to today’s readings. In his book, The Name of God is Mercy, Pope Francis recalled a powerful moment from his years as a parish priest in Argentina. “I remember a mother with young children,” he wrote, “whose...
Here is a link to today’s readings. Recently, a list of the worst cities for safe driving in the U.S. was published by a prominent insurance company that compared crash frequency rates among 200 cities. Being from Massachusetts, I was amused...
Here is a link to today’s readings. In his excellent textbook, Path Through Catholicism, Jesuit father Mark Link retells the story of the Italian composer Puccini concerning his final work, Turandot. “While writing it,” says Link, “he was stricken with cancer....
