A few months ago, I was stuck in the deep trenches of service options on the Catholic Volunteer Network website. Simultaneously, I was overwhelmed when thinking about the enormity of social, political, and economic issues affecting real people’s lives inside and outside the U.S. Would I be choosing one community over another? What are the implications of that? Who is my brother, sister, mother? Ho...
Jesus, because he remains forever, has a high priesthood which does not pass away. Therefore he is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he forever lives to make intercession for them. It is fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacri...
While serving a weekday Mass recently, the only way to remain focused while holding the Roman Missal (a large book that necessitates a strange twisting of myself to hold it upright) was to follow along on the page as the priest read the Eucharistic Prayer. This proved beneficial since I was struck anew by a phrase I have heard virtually every week since birth (although in a new translation since 2...
During my first year in college, I heard Eucharistic Prayer I (the Roman Canon as I would later learn) for the first time. Upon first praying the text, I thought to myself, there are so many random saints who are named. Who are they? Why no Saint Patrick or Francis or Clare or Ignatius of Loyola? I also thought to myself, as it was prayed throughout the Easter season, "Hmmm, this is long. I wish i...
Protons, neutrons, electrons. Atoms, elements, and chemicals. These are words that you are probably used to hearing in a science class, not in a blog post about how one encounters God. I am a chemist, though, and as strange as it might sound, through these basic building blocks of matter, I find God in my work.
If you have ever learned a second language, you know that some concepts do not translate perfectly. I have always loved discovering those words and phrases in Spanish that more precisely convey meaning than their corresponding English. The feeling is akin to becoming privy to a small but special secret—only these are the secrets you want to share with others, hoping they provide a similar sense of...
This post was originally delivered as a homily at Vespers on Wednesday, April 13, 2016. We are grateful for the author’s permission to publish it here.
Every Wednesday another seminarian and I work at a shelter run by Mother Teresa’s sisters, the Missionaries of Charity. The shelter is in the poorest ZIP code in the United States. The men there have messy and complicated lives — many are estranged from families, suffer addictions or check knives at the door — but somehow these lives seem to work out. These guys have almost nothing but they find w...
If you have spent any time in a parish—or in the Midwest for that matter—you have likely been to a potluck. You know, a meal where various dishes are brought to be shared and enjoyed by all. Sometimes when a group really knows how to throw a good potluck, you may have even been assigned a dish “category” corresponding with the first letter of your last name. Now, those people really know how to th...
