Jesus said to his disciples: “Be watchful!  Be alert!  You do not know when the time will come. …Watch, therefore; you do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at the cockcrow, or in the morning.  May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.  What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’” (Mk 13:33, 36-37).

With these words, our Lord calls us to prepare us for his coming; he comes to bring us to God’s kingdom. As […]

On this, the last Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year, the Church calls us to reflect on the kingship of Jesus Christ.  It’s quite different from how we ordinarily think of a king.  Rather than a ruler who makes his power known over his subjects, our God is like a shepherd tending his flock.  As we hear in this Sunday’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, God will look after his sheep “as a shepherd tends his flock when he finds himself among his scattered sheep” (Ez […]

Did you know that there have been nine National Eucharistic Congresses here in the United States of America?  Many of us fondly recall the 41^st International Eucharistic Congress that our archdiocese hosted in August of 1976.  It was a great boost to our faith and followed a long line of Eucharistic Congresses held around the world since the first one in Lille, France in 1881!  But, there have also been National Eucharistic Congresses – nine in all – beginning in 1895; the last one was in 1941.  And, you will […]

This Wednesday, 1 November, we will join with the universal Church in celebrating the Solemnity of All Saints.  We will celebrate a Vigil Mass on Tuesday at 6:00pm and will celebrate Mass at 6:30 and 8:00am and at 12:10 and 7:00pm on Wednesday.  I encourage you to join in celebrating with all the saints who intercede for us in heaven.  As we read so simply but powerfully written in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document prepared for our reflection during this three-year Eucharistic Revival entitled The Mystery of […]

“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt. 22: 21).  As we hear in today’s reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel, when some of the religious leaders try to trap Jesus with a question about whether or not to pay the Roman taxes, Jesus reminds his listeners that everything belongs to God.  After all, he is the creator of the universe and gives us all that we have.  And so, on this Stewardship Weekend, I invite you to reflect on how we can all […]

You may recall that Pope Francis called a Synod of Bishops, entitled For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission; it opened in the Vatican on 9 October 2021 and will conclude in October 2024.  Its aim is to discern how the Holy Spirit is moving through and with the Church.  Listening sessions were held throughout the dioceses around the world – including ours – in the spring of 2022.  The question asked at those listening sessions was: “How does this ‘journeying together,’ which takes place today at different levels […]