I. Marriage isn’t for wimps. That may explain why I’m unmarried. Yet, I have the audacity to preach about marriage. At hundreds and hundreds of weddings in my celibate career. And today. So here goes… First, some historical context.
Read MoreI. As many of you know, I spent my seminary years, five of them, in Rome, spitting distance from the Vatican. I will always be grateful for the countless times I was privileged to stand in St. Peter’s Basilica, built…
Read MoreI. One of my favorite YouTube videos comes from a Philadelphia Phillies game. A fan leans over a railing and nabs a foul ball. He was thrilled. He hands the ball to his three-year-old daughter. To his amazement, the little…
Read MoreI. I spent October of 1991 on Unit 6-A of St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul. I was hospitalized for depression. I was embarrassed to be there, especially because the others who were there were obviously in much worse shape…
Read MoreI. An “impediment” is, literally, something that gets in the way of our feet—our “pedi,” in Latin (pedal, pedestrian, pedicure). Jesus poked, spat, and groaned to heal the man with hearing and speech impediments. Back in the olden days, when…
Read MoreI. I was on retreat last week at St. Mary’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Morristown, New Jersey—safely tucked away when the clergy sex abuse scandal in this country became an even sorrier spectacle with the Pennsylvania revelations, the discoveries…
Read MoreI. Some years ago, a group of American sisters traveled to Guatemala to begin work as missionaries there. Upon arriving, they were overwhelmed by the poverty and the violence that they encountered. Its effect on them was apparent to those…
Read MoreA few years ago, on the backroads of San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, I witnessed the women of that town, with their babies bundled on their backs, go to the mission’s pick-up truck to collect a sack of grain. Occasionally, a…
Read MoreI. It’s called “Glamour Shots.” You’ve seen them in malls: portrait photography, as their website states, of, “you being the best version of yourself”—“you” with chicer clothes, bigger hair, and more makeup than you’ve ever imagined—with some digital touchups. They…
Read MoreI. Frederick Buechner writes, Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there…
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