In this age of anger management, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that sometimes anger might be justified. When values are violated or important principles are at stake, anger is an appropriate feeling, as Jesus well knew. It’s all a question of how you handle and channel anger when it arises. Pause for a prayer and channel your angry energy for constructive change.

SOME THINGS, YOU can’t have a religion without them. Like the indefinable essence we call holiness. That God is omnipresent in no way detracts from the concept that some things, places, hours, people are experienced as holier than others. What do we mean by this?

When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.

When people walk into St. Gertrude Church for the first time they usually remark about the beauty that envelopes them—the soaring gothic space, the deep colors and intricate designs of the stained glass windows, the polished marble, the delicate statues and shrines, the carved wood, and so much more. Their eyes are drawn immediately to the altar, with its clean and uncluttered lines. I smile as they share their compliments and I invite them, if it their first time in the church, to make a wish and say a prayer. That’s what my mother told to me should be done.

We pray to become the living body of Christ.

If any one of you was ever told your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and therefore something you should keep pure, raise your hand. But Saint Paul actually had something a little different in mind.

How often, when we speak of church, we have to clarify whether we mean the faith community or the building where that community gathers. The fact that the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica today replaces even the Sunday liturgy reminds us that our faith reaches into the clay from which we are made.

We celebrate the love and the unity we share as the family of faith that is the church everywhere people gather in faith, goodwill, and love. —Father Dominic Grassi