St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians has been called St. Paul’s “Letter of Joy.” Philippi was a village in Macedonia named for the father of Alexander the Great, Philip II. This beautiful letter is rich in insights into Paul’s theology and his apostolic love and concern for the Gospel and his converts. In Philippians, Paul reveals his human sensitivity and...
October is finished and November is already three days old. However, I would like to stop for a moment and give a nod to October because it is a great month for remembering some of our favorite saints. It begins with the commemoration of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, and ends with All Hallows Eve, the night of spirits who do not so much haunt streets as inspire hearts. We then...
The Church has encouraged prayer for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity. “If we had no care for the dead,” Augustine noted, “we would not be in the habit of praying for them.” Yet pre-Christian rites for the deceased retained such a strong hold on the superstitious imagination that a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early...
I am sure that there were many a jack-o’-lantern decorating the neighborhoods of Frankfort yesterday. Being a Christian can be compared to being a jack-o’-lantern. God picks you from the field, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off you. Then he cuts off the top and scoops out the yucky stuff. He removes the pulp of impurity and injustice and seeds of doubt, hate, and greed....
We put on seatbelts to protect ourselves as we ride in a car. We put on sunscreen to protect us from harmful rays of the sun. We wear coats to stay warm, choose to traverse the rocky ground in appropriate footwear, and reflective jackets when riding a bicycle at night or working on a construction site. It should not strike us as odd, then, that St. Paul exhorts us to put on the armor of God in...