Pastor

At a recent parish council meeting, some questions arose about the Mass and the liturgy. I’ll try to remember to spend a few minutes at Mass addressing these before Lent kicks in, but these questions can be a little complicated, so I wanted to write about them as well. Some topics I hope to get […]

The feast of Candlemas (the Presentation of the Lord, February 2nd) is one of the great feast days of the liturgical year that most Catholics too often overlook. We will celebrate the special Mass, procession, and candle blessing ritual for Candlemas this year on Wednesday at St. Peter at 9:00 a.m. I encourage you to

49 years is a long time.  As of yesterday, that is how long the country has lived under the Roe v. Wade regime – that is, the coercive mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court to make it legal in all 50 states to kill a child in the womb for almost any reason at any time, due

Now that we have completed the celebration of the Christmas season, the parishes and Archdiocese are moving forward with some of the implementation details regarding the Beacons of Light pastoral planning initiative to adjust priest assignments and parish operations to prepare for the future. The initial changes for that will begin on July 1st of

Our life is marked by constant transitions: new jobs or retirement, new relationships, the loss of loved ones, moving to a new town, and more. We just celebrated the transition to a new calendar year and the whole Archdiocese will soon be going through a major transition in July, as we reconfigure all our parishes

Because of some peculiarities of the liturgical calendar, we celebrate the solemn feasts of Mary, Mother of God, and the Epiphany of Our Lord in the same weekend back-to-back. Many mysteries related to those feasts to reflect on in a short amount of time – much of it beautifully depicted in the scene here. One

We recently concluded the holy year of St. Joseph that was declared by our Holy Father Pope Francis. So on this Christmas-week feast of the Holy Family, as we contemplate the mystery of the birth of Christ, I also want to reflect on his role in the Holy Family of Nazareth and in our current

My dad taught American history for a living, and so I have been immersed in it from childhood. Like many boys my age, I played cowboys and Indians growing up and imagined what it would be like for the pioneers expanding westward into the great wilderness beyond the Alleghenies in the days of the Wild

As we continue through this season of Advent, waiting with joy and hope for Christ to come again in glory, we also remember on this third Sunday Our Lady of Guadalupe. Although devotion to Our Lady under this title is most popular in Mexico where she appeared, there is a growing devotion to her throughout

Last week, I wrote about the huge gap between the way most Christians celebrate the Advent season and the way the Gospels of Advent remind us to. I reflect on one of the Advent sermons of the great 19th Century English convert, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman. (You can read that sermon, Vol. IV, #22,