Those who gather together to worship are family, says Alice Camille in a reflection on the meaning of the community gathered in worship in this Sunday’s Exploring the Word. When it comes to creating a biological family, better pull out the pocketbook . . .

The kindness of the Lord “endures forever,” the psalmist asserts this Sunday. While the human lifespan does not endure forever, there is no reason it can’t last longer than it does today, says Harvard Medical School researcher . . .

We learn in the reading from the Book of Isaiah this Sunday that sometimes bad leadership must be resisted through forceful action, as when the Lord warned Shebna, “I will thrust you from your office . . .

The psalmist is grateful to the Lord for having “heard the words of my mouth.” The words of war dissenters in both Gaza and Israel, however, seem to fall on deaf ears . . .

“I began to pray the rosary. It was what my mother and grandmother would have prayed.”

In 2011, the worst African elephant poaching year on record since 1998, poachers killed an estimated 40,000 elephants, or about 8 percent of the elephant population in Africa.