In their recent pastoral letter on marriage, the bishops of the United States wrote that marriage is a sacrament "directed toward the salvation of others." How different is this approach from the modern view of marriage! Continue »

I can see merit in St. John Chrysostom’s teaching about the "mini-church." But what can I do? My spouse and I have a hard time finding consensus when we disagree. We tend to get into fights. My spouse doesn’t practice the faith. My children are too young. My children are too old. My children aren’t interested in Jesus or the church. Continue »

When the bishops of the United States released their 2009 Pastoral Letter entitled "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan," they put forth a blueprint for marriage that sought to encourage and inspire couples at every stage of their lives. One of the major themes that flowed through this document was the call for every family to become a mini-church, a place where each family member experiences Jesus’ love and strives to treat each other with that love. Continue »

When St. John sat down to write his Gospel, he had a few choices to make. Like Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who had written before him, he wanted to tell people about who Jesus was and what he did. And to do that, he knew he had to talk about Jesus’ miracles. But which ones? There were so many! Continue »

It was probably with Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, published in 1948, that the modern spirituality book was born. People began to realize how much they could experience from this kind of reading, and today the number of spiritual books dwarfs (fifty to one) the number published in Merton’s early days as a monk. Continue »

The year was 1994. I was five years old and on the "little league" soccer team of Holy Rosary Catholic School in Memphis, Tennessee. I was eager to play, but after only a few moments on the field, my legs would begin to twinge in pain and feel too heavy to run. Continue »

Christ the Lord abundantly blessed this many-faceted love [between a husband and wife], welling up as it does from the fountain of divine love and structured as it is on the model of his union with his church. Continue »

The front door swung open at my knock, and a young man greeted me with a hearty, "Come on in, Father! We’ve been looking forward to seeing you." The feeling was mutual. As I stepped into the living room and greeted the couples gathered there, I felt grateful for our friendship. Continue »