This is a psalm of thanksgiving that expresses in poetry the spontaneous outpouring of joy we feel when God has answered our prayers. More »

An elderly Chinese farmer trudged slowly along the mountainous path of Chun Ta Ping, the warmth of his breath making white puffs in the frigid air. The beauty of the peaceful blanket of snow, however, could not stem the rumbles of hunger in his stomach. This winter of 1960 marked two years of a terrible famine; many in Hunan were starving. More »

The unassuming "just man" who once took the child Jesus and his mother into his care and protection now watches over the whole Body of Christ in his characteristically vigilant but background manner. As Pope Pius IX declared on December 8, 1870, St. Joseph is "Patron of the Universal Church." And though even fewer Catholics are aware of it, St. Joseph is also intimately connected with the Second Vatican Council. More »

It is late at night, almost seven hundred years ago, in the lovely central Italian region of Tuscany. Inside a small room, a young woman is speaking animatedly about God. Her hands fly back and forth, flickering in the candlelight. Opposite her, struggling to listen but barely able to remain awake, sits her confessor—a trained theologian and a saintly man. More »

I once came across a book describing the senses of deep-sea creatures that never see daylight. Some of them have rows of lights like portholes along their flanks to enable them to see both prey and predators; others create a chemical reaction in their bodies to produce bioluminescent light. It was clear that every animal is endowed with the senses it needs for survival and the instinctive skills to use them competently. More »

The gospels tell us surprisingly little about Jesus’ routine or regular practice of prayer. In what seems to have been the earliest gospel, Mark notes that after Jesus’ initial successes in calling disciples, casting out a demon, and healing Peter’s mother-in-law and many other sick people, Jesus got up early in the morning and went to pray at a deserted place (1:35). More »

The Word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14). Christianity is an incarnational religion. We believe that God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, took on our humanity in the land of Israel in what we call the first century a.d. More »

The time: not long after the coming of the Spirit to the disciples on Pentecost. The place: not far from Jerusalem. The characters: a leader among the Jerusalem Christians named Philip, and an Ethiopian government official, unnamed. More »