Category Archives: Quarantine

posted 5/16/20 During this season of Easter, the Church gives us readings for Mass taken from the Acts of the Apostles. The Book of Acts tells us about the earliest days of the Church and the missionary work of the Apostles, especially St. Paul.  This past week featured a remarkable passage (Acts 14:5-28) about the experiences of Paul and Barnabas asContinue reading “Enduring Hardships”

posted 4/24/20 Last year my sister was looking for a nice show that she and her husband could watch with their children.  Remembering how much she enjoyed the show Little House on the Prairie as a kid, she decided she would introduce them to it.  Unfortunately, the first episode she played for them was the one in which the family’s barn burned down in aContinue reading “Little House”

posted 4/23/20 “To those who are used to daily Mass there is no privation more terrible than that of having to do without it.”  These words are from the book This War is the Passion by Caryll Houselander.  Houselander was born in England in 1901 and became Catholic at the age of six, when her mother entered the Church.  She had several mystical experiences in herContinue reading “Living the Mass”

posted 4/17/20 When I was in my mid-20s I spent some time living in Spain. Before I arrived I had signed up to take some language courses at a school in Madrid to improve my Spanish, which I hadn’t studied since my sophomore year of college.  I remember one day, around lunchtime, I was walking up and down one of the main streetsContinue reading “Help”

posted 4/1/20 When I was in seminary I was introduced to the work of the author Walker Percy.  Percy was a native of Alabama and after finishing college at the University of North Carolina went to study medicine at Columbia University in New York.  While working as an intern at Bellvue Hospital in 1942, Walker contracted tuberculosis and was forced toContinue reading “Walker Percy”

posted 3/28/20 The Holy Father’s Urbi et Orbi blessing yesterday was very beautiful.  I was particularly struck by the solitary image of him walking up the steps to the podium, and then by the moment in which he led Benediction, blessing the city and the world with the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance.  In his prayer, the pope said: “ItContinue reading “This Strange Sabbath”

posted 3/26/20 I got a call today from my friend Fr. Andy Vill.  Fr. Vill might be familiar to you since he served as the assistant at St. John’s downtown for several years.  He’s currently living in Spain, discerning whether he is being called to join a religious community there.  My friendship with Fr. Vill goes back to our time inContinue reading “The Angelus”

posted 3/23/20 “Sometimes I think that those who have never been deprived of an opportunity to say or hear Mass do not really appreciate what a treasure the Mass is.” – Fr. Walter Ciszek  For the past month or so I’ve been making my way through a book called He Leadeth Me, which is the spiritual autobiography of Fr. Walter Ciszek,Continue reading “Missing Mass”

posted 3/21/20 In the year 165 AD plague broke out in the Roman Empire.  Now referred to as the Antonine Plague, historians believe it originated in China and that Roman soldiers came into contact with it while on campaign in modern-day Iraq.  It quickly spread into Gaul and the Germanic territories held by the Empire and even down into the Italian peninsula.  Based on contemporary descriptionsContinue reading “Love in the Time of Coronavirus”