November 2022

Therefore, stay awake! At its foundation, the message of the Advent season is “Be Prepared!” This goes hand in hand with the warning that Jesus gives us in this weekend’s Gospel: “Stay awake!” The problem is that many of us don’t take this warning seriously. We refuse to admit (or, perhaps, don’t realize) that we are sleeping through our lives; too drowsy to recognize where we are falling short of the great promise of salvation; too “out of it” (or, perhaps

Hey Y’all, Have you ever noticed how some words are just flat out picturesque? I’m not talking about onomatopoeia where words are associated with sounds – like pitter-patter (of little feet), meow, sizzle, boing, or zap. No. I’m thinking of words that evoke an image or a mindset that brings a picture to our mind’s eye. These words are starting points from which our imaginations run around a bit. So allow me to muse on a couple words taken from our

“See that you not be deceived.” When FBI agents learn to identify counterfeit bills, they do not study fake bills.  Instead, they spend hours studying genuine currency so that they can gain a complete understanding of how it looks and feels.  Knowing the real thing intimately makes it easier to spot counterfeits.  In almost every endeavor, the key to knowing falsehood is deeply knowing and understanding the truth.  This particularly applies in matters of our faith.  While the Psalmist tells us

It’s November y’all! In the Catholic Church world, that means that we start the month thinking about Saints and souls, reminding us of all those who have gone before us. (That’s why we have names of saints, although non-canonized, flowing out from under our Altar. These are the names of the folks for whom we’ve celebrated a funeral Mass on this very Altar in the last year. A little citation from Rev. 6:9-11 should be applied here. We will continue to