Aren’t we quick to want to call down fire on our enemies? It kind of goes with the territory of human existence. If we can identify the bad guys—”them”—then we can claim the identity of the good guys—”us.”

Years ago, Ed, a friend of mine, proposed to a young woman he’d been dating for several months. The woman was thrilled, and when he was with her, Ed was caught up in the excitement as well. But when he was out on his own or with his friends, he found himself flirting and daydreaming about others.

Living in a city with a lot of violent crime, like Chicago—or anywhere in this dangerous world—can harden a person. When you encounter trouble, or even sense it, you have to look out for yourself and get out of the way.

Dorothy Day’s 1963 book Loaves and Fishes chronicled the founding and early decades of the Catholic Worker Movement, which Day started with French worker-scholar Peter Maurin in 1933.

A middle-aged priest finally made his way into Alcoholics Anonymous after years of hiding his drinking, frustrated at his inability to stop.

I’m a linear thinker who values efficient routes and measurable progress—a rule-follower, who likes clear direction. Not the type to intuit her way through a labyrinth.

Bryan never thought of himself as a spiritual person. He went to church once in a while, especially on Christmas and Easter and during Lent, but he never thought about it much. Now he had come to know the truth about himself and had come to understand that the truth was from God.

In the fourth century a lot of people in the Christian world thought the priest Arius had a pretty good take on the Trinity. He said that God came before his Word, so there was a time when Jesus was not.

Her family had moved away long before I arrived at the parish. Her last years were spent in a nursing home somewhere downstate. When she died her children called the parish.

When  my mother was 43 years old, she was diagnosed with a rare cancer that required radical surgery that she had only a 50 percent chance of surviving. I was 12 years old at the time, and not completely sure of all that was happening.