ONE OF THE FUNNIEST movies of the 2002 season was My Big Fat Greek Wedding. This warm and loving story of a family’s efforts to maintain their Greek heritage is punctuated throughout with the family patriarch’s insistence that every single word in the English language can be traced back to a Greek word or expression. He even manages at one point, with some hilarious mental gymnastics, to give the “Greek root” of the word “kimono.”  More...

THE NOTION OF “CALL” is not peripheral to scripture but fundamental to the Bible’s understanding of human existence before God. Who can forget in the opening chapters of Mark and Matthew’s gospels those encounters by the Sea of Galilee? Fishermen, Simon and Andrew casting their nets in the sea; James, son of Zebedee and John his brother, sitting in their boat mending their nets—they have no inkling of what is about to happen to them, something that will change their lives forever. Jesus, walking by the sea, calls to them, “Come, follow me and I will make you fish for people” (Mark 1:16-20). They drop their nets and leave their father and his workers behind in the boat where they’d been sitting.  More...

MY FAMILY AND I strolled down beautiful Michigan Avenue in Chicago last week. Approaching the Congress Plaza Hotel, we saw about a dozen people marching around in front of the hotel, chanting, “We don’t eat, you don’t sleep!” Their picket signs indicated they were hotel workers on strike. The hotel has been paying its workers far below what other workers in Chicago hotels were getting and now wants to cut their pay.  More...

SHE WAS A DAY LABORER, working 10 hours at a factory and spending another two on the bus to and from work. All she wanted was to read and write well enough to fill out a job application so she could get a full-time job with a company that offered benefits. It was a simple goal, made difficult by the fact that she was 55, her eyesight was failing, and her mind and memory weren’t as sharp as they used to be. But she persevered. Working with a tutor every Tuesday and Thursday, she struggled to memorize the alphabet and sound out words.  More...

WE USE THE WORD so easily, so flippantly, so casually: love. A word, like the word God, that has had its prickly wild edges rubbed off from such common and daily use over the long millennia that human beings have prowled the planet. Yet love, like God, is a thing of unimaginable complexity, a subject to spend a lifetime wondering at openmouthed; and God’s love, the extraordinary and mysterious force that drives all that is, demands far more response from us than the mere gratitude we offer on days when things are going well for us.  More...

CHRISTIAN PASTOR and theologian Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) experienced the poverty and hopelessness of people living in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York. He is one of the “saints” Robert Ellsberg writes about in his book All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (Crossroad, 1997). Ellsberg says: “Under these circumstances [of poverty and disease and hopelessness], it did not seem adequate to preach about personal salvation, conversion, or simply trusting in Jesus. Increasingly [Rauschenbusch] expanded his ministry to take up social concerns and to try to awaken the conscience of the church to its responsibilities in the world. But here again Rauschenbusch felt that more was necessary than traditional forms of organized charity. He believed that the gospel today required the transformation of a social system that was responsible for so much poverty and injustice.”  More...

WHAT CAN BE MORE POWERFUL than the Word of God? My friends, what other force on this earth or beyond it has the ability to create and transform the world like the initiating, sustaining divine Word? God spoke—and worlds came into being. When God speaks, the Bible tells us, mountains move, valleys are filled, and highways appear in the desert. Once God calls a thing into being, it exists, it happens. And when God chose to speak a word-made-flesh into human history, Jesus became one with us in the same way he is one with God.  More...

ASK PEOPLE what we celebrate on Independence Day, and most would say freedom. After all, we call our country the “land of the free.” And the Declaration of Independence, ratified on this day more than two centuries ago, reminds us we are endowed by our Creator “with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Though we may differ about what kind of leadership our government should have, most of us feel loyalty and love for our country and gratitude for its gifts.  More...

JOANNE DIED OF CANCER at 70 years old. She grew up in a small town and went away to the big city to work. She never married, and after a while she came home to be near her mother, Jessie, who worked in a factory until she was 83 years old. After her mother had a stroke and the small business Joanne worked for closed down, she spent most of her days at the nursing home, visiting Jessie and the other residents, helping out in whatever ways she could. She was a very quiet person, physically unremarkable, completely unassuming, as ordinary and plain as daily bread. She came to Mass every weekend and holy day, without fail, and sat alone in the farthest corner of the last pew.  More...

DOES GOD want you to be prudent? At first glance, that would seem to be Jesus’ message. But look a little more closely at the context. Just last week we heard of the prodigal son who returned home destitute and in disgrace. His father responded very imprudently, as the older son pointed out.  More...

The common theme running through all three of today's readings is faith: enduring, abiding, hope-sustaining faith. In Luke's gospel the apostles ask Jesus to "increase our faith." And Jesus responds that with faith the size of a mustard seed one could command a bush to uproot and be cast into the sea, and it would be done. To the traditional lament "O ye of little faith," one might respond, "That's OK. A little faith can work wonders."  More...

Some years ago a young U.S. Marine appeared on morning television and told of the ordeal of having been in an explosion, pinned under rubble and debris. The desperate cries from other soldiers shouting for help shattered the smoke-filled pit. He suddenly remembered saying, when he enlisted in the Marines, that he was not afraid to die. Now, he had different thoughts. He said that this moment was the first time in his life he really felt he knew what thanksgiving was all about. He was alive, at least, and he began to pray. He did not want to die.

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I don't know if it happened again this Christmas season, but for many years in the Kansas City area a "Secret Santa" has sought out people who are down on their luck and quietly slipped them an envelope with a crisp $100 bill tucked inside. The people are usually astonished at this unmerited act of generosity. Many stand there with tears in their eyes, wondering what brought about this good fortune.  More...

Welcome to lent. On this Ash Wednesday, some of us have the custom of wishing one another a "good Lent." Why good? Shouldn't we be wishing one another a solemn or serious or remorseful Lent? Maybe we should, but it is entirely appropriate to extend this good wish to others. Lent is good. It's good because it focuses us on what is most important.  More...

It was July 1992, and I was on a three-week study tour-pilgrimage in the Holy Land. In the middle of a long hike on a scorching day, we came across two shepherds, smoking and chatting in a patch of shade. Their two flocks were all mixed together, hundreds of sheep, lazily rambling the hillsides. The two shepherds were happy to see us, and we began to visit. We asked, through our guide, how the sheep, all jumbled together, would know their rightful shepherd when the time came to move on. The two herdsmen chuckled and rose to take the dare: Each one went to an opposite side of the path, shouted out an indecipherable yell, and began to walk away. Immediately, the sheep ran behind their proper shepherd. And the few stragglers were spotted right away by their vigilant leader and summoned to follow. It was clear: The sheep knew their shepherd; the shepherd knew his sheep.  More...

FOR TO ME life is Christ and death is gain," Paul writes to the Philippians from prison. He is facing a very real possibility of being put to death for preaching the gospel. Paul muses whether it is better for him to die and have the joy of being with Christ, or to continue living and to work for the gospel. He concludes it is better to remain in the flesh and to labor for the Philippians!  More...

EPIPHANY: It means "a manifestation of God." In today's language, we use this word to describe an "aha moment"-a fleeting glimpse of insight in the midst of the everyday thoughts that come and go.  More...

DURING AN AUTUMN BREAK from college, three friends and I traveled up the East Coast to see the sights. We spent a day in Manhattan visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Empire State Building, Fifth Avenue, and Central Park. It was twilight and we stopped to purchase roasted chestnuts and soft pretzels from a street vendor in Times Square.

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There's a bit of irony in the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday. Jesus warns us, "Do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues . . . so that others may see them." Well, here we are: praying in front of each other in a church, where "others may see us." Soon we'll get ashes on our foreheads, and everybody who sees us for the rest of the day will notice us. But I don't think we risk ignoring Jesus' warning. I doubt that you came here to impress other people with your holiness. You came for other reasons.  More...

We've all heard people say things like, "Oh, that's my little retreat; it's where I go to get away from it all." They may be referring to their workshop, the corner of a room, or even their car where they have their own private space. It's a quiet place to settle down and regroup. We Americans really need such a place, for it has been said that in America we invented the rocking chair so that we could keep moving even while we are sitting!  More...

God does not delight in death, but in life, the Book of Wisdom tells us. God wants creation to live. If we have faith in our life-giving God, the world and all who dwell in it will be made well and live. It is the mission of the church and those who belong to it to cooperate with God's desire to bring life and wholeness to the world.  More...

When I was a kid, my sisters, cousins, and I liked to shout in wide, empty spaces, from the top of a mountain, or in a tunnel, in order to hear an echo. We found it fascinating that our own voices could sound so funny, as if they regained strength-at least for a while. It seemed as if someone else, down there, were responding, returning the sound to us. Sound experts tell us that for a sound to be so, it needs to enter a medium. Therefore, a sound is not a sound if it is not received.  More...

On Halloween strangers will come to our doors begging for goodies. It's a particularly fun way, during this season of All Saints and All Souls, to remember our departed loved ones and our obligation to help them with our prayers and good works. They are, in a way, strangers who have crossed the borders of death into a new world filled with the promise of eternal blessings, yet their struggle to rise above human weakness continues.  More...

The Danish film Babette's Feast won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1987. Set in the bleak Danish terrain of the Jutland Peninsula in the 1870s, the movie tells the story of Babette, a 19th-century political refugee from Paris, who shows up at the doorstep of two elderly sisters who have devoted their life to an austere Christian congregation their late father founded.  More...

Most Catholics are not surprised the church makes feast days such as the Immaculate Conception or the Solemnity of Mary on New Year's Day holy days of obligation. But they might be surprised to learn that Ash Wednesday is not among these days-nor has the church made any day of repentance an "obligation." Interestingly, in most years more Catholics come to church on this day than on any celebratory holy day. What this fact tells us is that our coming here to begin this season of repentance comes of our own free choice. And it is good that we are here together on this day of communal repentance, to receive the mark of ashes.  More...

IT’S ALMOST FUNNY to read the author of Timothy saying he received mercy because he was ignorant—on a day we celebrate catechists and teachers! Because of their work, may none of us be able to make the same excuse.  More...

Memories are mysterious things. Moments of remembering that flash across our minds at the sound of a word or the aroma of perfume or the phrase of a song. Sometimes our memories are welcomed treasures, giving birth to smiles and warm affection. Other times, as when we are grieving the loss of someone we love, memories wash over us as waves of pain and we become immobilized by grief.  More...

Today's children live in a challenging culture. They are often overwhelmed, not only by harmful messages in the media but also through excessive participation in extracurricular activities, particularly sports. Physical therapists have expressed concern for the increasing number of young children coming for treatment for damage done to muscles and tendons because of overinvolvement in sports. Parents, they fear, don't seem to realize that even young healthy children need a break, with substantial time for physical and mental recovery.  More...

It all hinges on the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is about how to fight and not become a casualty yourself. The cross is about being the victory instead of just winning a victory. It is a way of winning that tries to bring along your opponents with you.  More...

He popped the question, and she responded with an enthusiastic yes. And from that moment they know a profound joy, the realization of a longing that has been growing maybe from the first time they met. It grew from a simple attraction into a romance as they dated, and blossomed into a young but real love, deepening until now they realize that the time was right for their love to express itself in a lifetime commitment.  More...

When trouble comes and we seem powerless to deal with it, we cry out, "O God, I have reached the end of my resources." That sentence is the key to the life God is offering us in and through Jesus Christ. If we want to know who Jesus is we must understand him as the One who at every moment of his life emptied himself and threw himself in absolute dependence on God's resources. If we want to know the person God wants us to be we must empty ourselves and acknowledge our absolute dependence on God's resources.  More...