A traveler spotted three men laying bricks. He asked the first man what he was doing. “I’m laying bricks.” The second man said he was “putting up a wall.” The third man was “building a cathedral.” Let’s explore.


A traveler spotted three men laying bricks. He asked the first man what he was doing. “I’m laying bricks.” The second man said he was “putting up a wall.” The third man was “building a cathedral.” Let’s explore.

I have no recollection of the initial life choice my parents made in my name. But they set me on a path I still walk 85 years later. It led me to unexpected of a life choice to be a Vincentian.

What is the largest and longest conversation in the world?
In 2019, Pope Francis set in motion a three-year conversation among 1.3 billion Catholics.
Each year we are reminded about a supersized dream. We all know the words “I have a dream”. It was a dream of loving one another. Jesus prayed … “that all may be one”.
Mothers often say “try it, you’ll like it”! I wonder of some today have rejected synodality without trying it or even understanding it.
The Magi were “men with a restless heart seekers after God. In Jerusalem the Magi ask questions: they inquire where the Child is to be found.
St. Vincent de Paul looked beyond his horizons to find Christ.
Pope Francis serves as visiting professor in the Magi “school of desire”. What can they teach us especially if we are stuck in a “parking lot” of life.
If I were John the Baptist standing in the Jordan, I am sure I would have asked Jesus, “why are you asking me, a sinner, to baptize you?” What’s behind God speaking about his beloved son?
A simple explanation of why the Word of God took flesh and fully entered into our human condition. Emmanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh says, “Don’t worry, I have been through all this and will help you get through it.”
Regina Bechtle connected the dots for me between Elizabeth Ann Seton, the feast of the Epiphany, and our “ordinary epiphanies”. She found her God precisely in the most ordinary of moments.
This inclusive way of seeing things, which transcends tensions by “keeping” and “pondering”, is the way of mothers, who, in moments of tension, do not divide, they keep, and in this way enable life to grow.
Pope Francis echos Saint Paul VI. Often these messages stress the traditional opposition between peace and war. This year he develops a theme from Saint Paul VI. – peace as the goal of a journey.
Francis give us rules for the road.
Pope Francis say ‘Littleness is where God is” … Let us ask ourselves” can we accept the challenge of littleness.
“By the coming of Jesus, the Person of the Word made flesh, into our world, God showed us the way of encounter and dialogue. Indeed, he made that way incarnate in himself, so that we might know it and follow it, in trust and hope.