Entering into Holy Week

Christ became obedient for us unto death, even death on a Cross. (Gospel Acclamation). â§ľ Palm Sunday begins our observance of Holy Week, the Week...

Providence and a Thief’s Goodness

Last year on Palm Sunday we heard the passion from Saint Mark’s Gospel, and next year it will be from Saint Matthew. Each is...

Benedict’s Intervention

In a remarkable turn of events, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI – former cardinal Josef Ratzinger – has just released a reflection on the current...

The Ratzinger Report Revisited

The Italian journalist and Catholic convert Vittorio Messori in 1985 published his two hundred page interview with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict...

A Letter to a Catholic School Teacher

(What follows is adapted from a letter of a parish priest, Father Scott Murray, to a Catholic school teacher, in the publicly-funded, separate system,...

From Savagery to Love

What follows is an excerpt from Pope (Emeritus) Benedict XVI's last Lenten message, completed in October of 2012; I wonder, as he penned these...

Instant Conversion

One feature of the Gospel for this Fifth Sunday of Lent has intrigued many readers: Jesus’s writing on the ground with his finger. For...

Justice in the Prodigal Son

So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with...

The Layered Meaning of the Prodigal Son

In 1861, John William Burgon, the (Anglican) dean of Chichester cathedral, preached a sermon in Christ Church cathedral, Oxford, that...

Losing Canada

When the cross atop Mount Royal was first erected in 1924, the Montreal Gazette described it as “a memorial to the survival of the Canadian people, whose...