Remember Rodney King, the terrible riots in L.A., and his now-famous plea "Can't we all just get along?"

Jesus' hard sayings show that there is no such thing as a part-time Christian. We all need to pay the cost of discipleship. What might you need to forego to jump into the Kingdom with both feet?

Take up your cross and follow me, Jesus told his disciples: to follow my way will involve the willingness to make sacrifices - including the sources of security most people take for granted.

He let nothing separate him from the love of God, and he spread that love to many who were in great need.

DENYING OURSELVES has never been socially acceptable. More wealth, more power, or more glamour is forever the order of the day.

Illness and death were real and part of life and the home and therefore not something to be afraid of.

Jesus asks all of us, "Who do you say I am?" There are a lot of wrong answers to that question floating around. Are you prone to thinking any of these from time to time?

"The Arizona legislature just passed the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law," blogged Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony on April 18, 2010.

Outside Johannesburg stands the Voortrekker Monument, which commemorates the Boer exodus into the South African hinterland, and in a sense marks the beginning of the South African system of racial separation and oppression, apartheid.

When it came to getting to church on time, Sylvia and Bob were the champions. They were usually among the first to show up for the 9 o'clock Mass on Sunday. They always sat in the same place near the front, right on the aisle.