Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep (Jn. 10:11). Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and as we continue to celebrate the Feast of Easter, we contemplate the figure of Jesus, the Good Shepherd “who has risen and who laid down his life for his sheep and willingly[…]
Being from the prairies, one of the habits my mother instilled in me as a boy was to take off my shoes whenever I entered a home. It never occurred to me that you could step into a house any other way. How scandalized I was when we moved overseas in our 20s to find[…]
‘And I when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death He was to die. (Jn 12:33) The veiled statues and images in our church indicate that we have entered into what was once known as Passiontide. The sacred liturgy leads us[…]
It’s been a while since anyone started a new religion. It’s not as easy as you think. You have to get a believable number of people to believe that you have some special insight into ultimate things. In recent times, we call these clusterings “cults” (though, like so much of our modern English usage, it[…]
Carl Jung (1875-1961), one of the fathers of modern psychology, once apparently quipped that in all his years of therapy he only ever met a handful of Catholics. Jews and Protestants were his bread and butter clientele; Catholics almost never came. One explanation is that Catholics sin less and have fewer sorrows. Another is that[…]
Zeal for your house will consume me (Jn 2:17). The Gospel records something uncharacteristic: the anger of Christ our Lord. It is a righteous anger, born of our Lord’s zeal for the House of the Lord. “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (Jn 2:16). The cleansing of the Temple, as[…]
Magna Carta is the foundation of our rights to this day. Its guarantees of due process, security of the person, property rights, popular control of taxation, religious freedom, even women’s rights, have been the rallying cry of defenders of freedom for eight centuries. And by making space for citizens to dream, act, and flourish, it[…]
On the second Sunday in Lent we always read the Gospel of the Transfiguration of our Lord. We do so in order that our focus may be directed towards the glory of Easter and our Lord’s victory over sin and death by His glorious Resurrection. Our Lenten penance is not an end in itself but[…]
After Jesus was baptized, the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan (Mk 1:12). On Ash Wednesday we began the observance of the holy season of Lent with the imposition of blessed ashes, an external sign of our interior resolve to undertake Lenten penance; so that[…]
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean! (Mk 1:41) This Sunday’s Gospel reading, in continuation with last Sunday’s text, describes another healing—a miracle. In fact, in the Gospel of St. Mark which we are reading this year, the miracles of Jesus[…]
