May 1st is the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, established by the Catholic Church in 1955. In 1889, May 1st was chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day…
At 24, she was Hollywood royalty. Then she disappeared into a monastery and never came back. It was 1957. A 19-year-old woman steps onto a soundstage for her first film…
Healing is a mystery. We don’t understand it. All we can do is to prepare our bodies to receive it. That’s what doctors do. They do it with surgery, with…
The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was once asked this question: What was the earliest sign of civilization in any given culture? The reporter expected the answer to be a…
“I saw the cross on his collar, and I broke down in tears.” That’s what Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman said after returning from one of the most intense experiences…
In today’s Gospel (John 10:1-10) Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name. He leads them. This shows us that Jesus knows each…
A young girl is eating dinner at a friend’s house. Her friend’s mother asks if she likes brussels sprouts. “Yes, of course,” the girl replied. “I like brussels sprouts.” After…
There’s something sleeping inside usDown in the soil of our chestsIts pulse hides behind our pulseIts breath behind our breath. When the world is grim, it awakensAnd grows to fill…
There once was a young woman who had a baby boy. Just after her son’s baptism, a ragged old man came to her, and offered to grant her one wish on behalf…
Imagine that Jesus is watching television with his twelve disciples. They’re on furlough from teaching and healing, taking it easy in the living room of Peter’s mother-in-law, doing a little…
Stock market guru Jim Cramer, host of television’s Mad Money, says, “Bulls make money.” Then he adds, “Bears make money.” Then the punch line, “Pigs get slaughtered.” “Bulls make money. Bears make…
A hundred feet above the Apurimac River, near the remote village of Huinchiri, Peru there is a suspension bridge that connects the Limi-Cuzzo Road. It has been there since the…
Several years ago I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I really enjoyed gazing at some of the luminous paintings of the great artist Renoir. They are…
Garrison Keillor said, “We always have a backstage view of ourselves.” We let the audience see only the neatly arranged stage. But behind the curtain all kinds of things are…
A baby was born to Mary Teresa Hickey and her husband in 1945. The parents came from Cork, Ireland. The baby was a Down’s Syndrome boy. Mary Teresa held the…
