What is lacking in Christ’s sufferings?

St. Paul makes a spectacular claim in this Sunday’s second reading: There is something lacking in Christ’s sufferings. How could this be? How could Christ’s suffering on the Cross be lacking anything? Where could we possibly find a better example of a complete gift of self, a total outpouring of love? What more perfect suffering […]

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The Habit of Eucharistic Faith

Last month, I gave a sermon on Good Shepherd Sunday on how to raise good future priests – future good shepherds. You might recall that one of the points I offered on how to encourage our sons to consider a priestly vocation was raising them to have reverence for the Eucharist. Since today is Corpus […]

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You Were Meant for More

You were made for so much more than this! That is the message of today’s Feast of the Ascension: You were meant for so much more than what this world has to offer. Today we celebrate the final event of the Paschal Mystery that we have been observing ever since Good Friday – the central […]

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Heaven and True Love

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13). Heaven is all about love. St. Paul tells us, “So faith, hope, love abide, […]

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Do you love me?

What does it mean to love someone? It is hard to capture in English what Christ is asking Peter in the Gospel today. Greek, the language in which St. John composed his Gospel, has many words for love, two of which John employs here – “agape” and “philia.” “Philia” is a love of deep friendship, […]

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True Prayer at Mass

It is rather late this year, but we have finally begun the holy season of Lent, this intense time in the Church’s life when we dedicate ourselves to what is most important: coming back to the Lord with our whole hearts through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The first of these three ancient Lenten disciplines, prayer, […]

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