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We are living in unsettling times, dangerous times, and paradoxical times. Every day we hear from health officials or politicians something to this effect: “keep apart but remain together.”  That sound like a paradox to me—keep apart, but remain together. How do you hold the paradox, the contradiction together? The keeping apart is a physical keeping apart; the remaining together is non-physical. We find living this paradox difficult because we are social beings and we were never meant to live apart.

Jesus, by washing his apostles’ feet, ...

It is still hard for me to believe that we will not be assembling for Holy Week, the holiest week of the liturgical year for us Christians. Holy Week begins with the blessing of the palms on Passion/Palm Sunday, but it is the last three days, the Triduum, the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord that is the liturgical and spiritual pinnacle for believers.

The Triduum begins at sunset on Holy Thursday, the day we commemorate the Last Supper and, consequently, the First Eucharist. ...

Before you read any further, take out your Bible and read John 11:1-45. (The Bible is that thick book covered in dust that you may be using as a coaster!). Read it? Good. It is this Sunday’s gospel reading of the raising of Lazarus. One question arising from that story that still prompts much debate is: Was Lazarus resuscitated or resurrected by Jesus?

Some say he was clearly resuscitated, not resurrected. His physical life was restored, but he would die again just like everyone else. Jesus, on ...

In 1624, English poet and clergyman, John Donne (1572-1631) coined the expression, “no man is an island.” Yet, as we sequester ourselves in our homes and remain two metres apart in public, many of us are beginning to feel like little, isolated islands.  I happened to cough in the grocery store the other day, and five people gave me dirty looks. (I’m used to dirty looks but not that many at the one time!)  It was a little taste of what lepers would have experienced in ...

Ahoy, dear parishioners, we are living in a very different and almost surreal moment of history.  So much of our personal and collective routines, both as Church and within the greater society, have been upended by something that cannot be seen with the naked eye. How could something so small cause such catastrophic effects throughout the entire world?  I do not know. But what I am reminded of, as we all hunker down, is how fragile and vulnerable and interconnected we all are. This is not ...