I suspect every one of us can admit to having been afraid.
Mary may have been the Mother of God, but I doubt she did not know fear.
he feast of the Assumption holds great hope for us.
With her Assumption into heaven, she finally understood how everything made sense.
I can remember two talks that stopped me in my tracks … and still nourish me today. Each, in its own way, broadened my vision of what it means to be a follower of Christ, the Evangelizer of the Poor.
In this Vincentian Mindwalk I am going to predict some things about what will happen when an ailing 86-year-old Pope Francis braves the sweltering heat wave in Lisbon to spend some time with young people at World Youth Day.
How do you look at the Church today? That’s a question we must ask ourselves.
Here I present Pope Francis’ own words describing three ways of looking at the Church.
Do you look at the Church from above, around you, and as a whole?
Yes! I figuratively rubbed shoulders with some 2000 bishops inside St. Peter’s! There are not many left who can say that.
Here I share my journey from a pre-Vatican II church to the church after Vatican II.
I will also share how belatedly I discovered that Vincent was one of the forerunners of the Church Pope Francis is calling us to become.
The picture on a puzzle box inspired me to see how the pieces fit together. This morning I read a reflection, “Either an Evangelizing Church or a Worldly Church. It provided me with the picture on the “Pope Francis puzzle box! I offer it as a picture of what guides Pope Francis.
They were comfortable… until they were told a story. Then they learned an uncomfortable truth. The person in the story out there, hid in their own heart.
In this Vincentian Mindwalk i explore how Pope Francis tells us a story about ourselves that unmasks our coverups and deceptions.
What do we mean when we sing “All are welcome?” In Jesus, God welcomes all of us. Do we do this in memory of Jesus who welcomed even his enemies?
Getting to know something… or… someone? This is the basic focus of catechetics.
In this Vincentian Mindwalk I explore how the lyrics of a Broadway helped me better understand Catechetical Sunday.
Luke, a generation after Jesus, uses Jesus’ stories to help Gentile Christians who faced painful choices. Luke, a Greek speaking outsider himself, wrote primarily to those who, like him, were outsiders to the “in” group. He used Jesus’ own stories to speak to the everyday problems these second-generation followers – rejection from the Pharisees and rejection by their own families.
Most of us think of Labor Day as marking the last hurrah of summer. In this Vincentian Mindwalk I try to reimagine the historic origin of Labor Day… as well as a restful BBQ recorded in the New Testament.
“Pope Francis just won’t stop!” In this Vincentian Mindwalk I share with you what one commentator refers to as 96 hours that reveal changes in the Christian world we grew up in. I refer to 96 hours of August 27-29-30, 2022.
“Very often it is a holiness found in our next-door neighbors, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence. We might call them “the middle class of holiness”…