Welcome to 2023. May it be a blessed year for the whole Earth and its inhabitants. Our sacred and secular calendars blossom with commemorations—not to mention personal to-dos—making focusing a challenge. Begin with the World Day of Peace (1): a good start, then let's keep the peace for 364 more days.

Mary "kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart." During the Octave of Christmas, the church has been contemplating the newborn Jesus, God's gift of self to us and all of creation.

There’s no intrinsic reason why a new year should be any different from an old one. While we’re conscious of having turned a page on a whole new calendar, New Year's Day is really no more than just another sunrise.

In the past few years I've been to more funerals than I care to count as my parents' generation crosses the threshold into all that is unseen.

He was the toughest kid on the block. As 10-year-olds, we didn’t admit it, but we were afraid of him. He’d take the ball we were playing with and throw it on a garage roof where we couldn’t get it.

Like the shepherds who went in haste to see the child Jesus, we eagerly seek to receive God's forgiveness and blessings.

A child needs both to be hugged and unhugged. The hug lets her know she is valuable. The unhug lets her know that she is viable.