From today’s reading, May 10, 2015: This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15: 12-13 Just last week it was New York City Police Officer (and fellow Long Islander) Brian Moore, age 25. Today, two more are gone: Hattiesburg, Mississippi Police Officers Benjamin Deen, age 34, and Liquori Tate, age 24. Young men, young lives. Gone. They are three among the countless... Read more

It’s not something that I particularly wish to dwell upon. But it’s unavoidable. It’s pervasive. And it’s real. It touches each of us in some way. Sometimes measured in smaller or larger degrees of connectedness to others, sometimes reaching down and disemboweling the remains of our own lacerated core. This isn’t at all about the ordinary sadness that we sometimes feel when life disappoints, or when our emotions sometimes get away from us, seemingly infused with a life of their own. No. For some,... Read more

Ours has become a culture of yes. One that trusts first and last in the individual instinct, however base, without regard to what was once considered objective truth. This is “my truth,” as a former New Jersey governor once pronounced upon his resignation. It is a yes to the self. It is a yes to the physical, to the material, and to all things visible. It’s no wonder that we have looked over all that we have transformed our selves and our culture into and have,... Read more

  The Nicene Creed each week reminds us that when we invoke our Catholic (n.) faith, we declare unity with the church in its all-embracing oneness – our catholic (adj.) existence. As Father Robert Barron has made clear on occasion, the word catholic, traced back from the Greek, means something along the lines of “according to the whole.” Another translation would be closer to “throughout the whole.” Although the word catholic is often used today to denote a church which is universal, there is some authority for the... Read more

In light of the recent Boston Bomber verdicts and the now looming penalty phase, the death penalty once again takes center stage. Here is what Boston’s four Bishops recently said about this case: The defendant in this case has been neutralized and will never again have the ability to cause harm . . . [b]ecause of this, we, the Catholic Bishops of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, believe that society can do better than the death penalty. More: The four bishops quoted... Read more

I’m sitting, at this very moment, in a hospital waiting room in Pennsylvania while scheduled, but major, surgery is being performed on a loved one.  No matter how routine – and this one is relatively so – the sights, the sounds, and the smells all around me remind me that this is no ordinary place, and that this is no ordinary day. For this is a place of pain. It’s a place of vulnerability. It’s a place of uncertainty and... Read more

He is risen, indeed! Have a blessed, transforming Easter! Here is Bishop Barron on the meaning of this day. Peace Read more

Those of us of a certain age will immediately recognize the unique, soft yet powerful, voice of broadcaster Paul Harvey. He was truly one-of-a-kind. A gifted storyteller, spanning decades, who could weave colorful, vivid images. Often left transfixed, we’d find ourselves grabbed by his hand as he led us through to the other side, to the “rest of the story.” A five minute exploration of our world. A deep reflection of our lives. I heard this story for the first... Read more