When our parish engaged couples come to meet with me to begin marriage preparation, I take the time to sit down and chat with them individually first before they talk about themselves as a couple. Once introductions are made, I often start by asking them how their parents chose their name.

John the Baptist said he was making way for someone greater, and over the centuries Christians have tended to take him at his word, maybe a little too much so, seeing him as a figure who played his part and exited stage left. To think of him this way, though, is to make him into exactly the opposite of what he stood for: a radically new way to relate to God.

I distinctly recall the day when my faith took firm root. I was 7 years old and my sisters and I had just been summoned by my dad to join him around the kitchen table while my mom fixed him dinner.

Many of my friends are starting to go through their children’s difficult teen years. In the eyes of their kids, they can’t do anything right, while the kids themselves are doing a whole lot wrong.

The pastor of the small farming village in Bari, Italy where my father was born was very gracious to me when I visited him. In the little church was a plaque thanking my dad and uncles for sending the money from America to build the simple structure.

As a lover of words I was fascinated to learn that the root of the word liturgy comes from Latin for “work of the people.” What an amazing insight that brings to the central ritual of Christianity. Breaking bread with fellow Christians, remembering Christ, and sharing in his Body and Blood are actions that early Christians actually considered their work.

I was in my friend Billy’s kitchen waiting for him to come downstairs so we could go out and play. Billy was the oldest of nine kids. Dinner was over, and his mother stood at the kitchen counter and dealt out the bread for eight sandwiches—12 pieces of bread, side by side, for the six kids who were in school, and four more pieces next to them to make the two sandwiches her husband would take to work with him.

A local blood bank has the name LifeSource. Blood indeed is what keeps us alive as it courses through our veins bringing in oxygen and taking out carbon dioxide. A simple transfusion of a pint of blood can mean the difference between life and death. Infections carried in the bloodstream can be deadly.

One summer night, many years ago, I rolled out my sleeping bag on a cement church basement floor and prepared for what I hoped would be a good night’s sleep. The next morning I would board a boat and make a two-hour trip out to the island base camp where I would spend six weeks as a canoe trip guide and counselor in the Canadian boundary waters.

Nicknames: Did you have one? Did you like it? Did it stick with you? Some nicknames are pretty obvious in their origins like “Shorty” or “Lefty” or “Irish.”