Seeds of Faith

My first experience with cancer occurred more than 30 years ago when my paternal grandfather died. I remember seeing how frail he became and how my grandparents’ dining room became his new bedroom to accommodate his care. I also recall…

One of my favorite cartoons from my childhood was the Super Friends — Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquaman, and others.  The Super Friends were “created from the cosmic legends of the universe … their mission to fight injustice, to right…

Thirty years ago this November, the Berlin Wall tumbled down and thousands of East Germans celebrated their new freedom.  Back home, a local grocery chain later sold fragments of the wall, and my dad purchased one of them for me as a…

One of my fondest memories of the last few years of my maternal grandmother’s life involves sacred art and our shared Catholic faith.  Three years before she died, the Cincinnati Museum Center in 2004 hosted a special traveling exhibit…

Summer offers us the extra time to appreciate God’s creation and presence — in nature, in the universe, and within our churches.  Recently, my family and I traveled to rural southeastern Ohio, far away from the bright city lights where we…

Obeying the Third Commandment and its call to keep the Sabbath is an important part of our identity.  Yet we also know that, in our increasingly secularized world, the numbers of those who attend religious services regularly is declining.…

He’s the silent saint we associate with Christmas. The Gospels contain no words from him but instead offer us examples of his unfailing devotion as a man of God, a faithful husband, and a loving father.  In the wake of the recent Church…

I usually don’t turn to the last page of a book and read the ending before I read anything else. But this time I did. Here is what I found:  There will be no faith in heaven, for we will already see; there will be no hope in heaven, for we…

We could say that the first word of the New Testament is “be joyful,” “be happy,” in other words, “joy.” This is the true meaning of Christmas: God is near us, so near that he became a child. — Pope Benedict XVI  That quote, printed in red…

This Thanksgiving, may we be more intentionally grateful for the many excellent clergy and religious that God has given the Church.  Particularly this year, we need to be thinking of those who answered God’s call and are serving with…