Well, that’s Good News. No matter what label anyone puts on you, Jesus calls you blessed.
This Gospel passage always reminds me of something the late Fr. Herb Grattan said in a homily he delivered in the late 1970’s at Immaculate Heart of Mary church. He said that when you are 20 years old you are worried about what everyone thinks about you. When you are 40 years old, you don’t care what anyone thinks about you. And when you are ...
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How Hopeful are We About Heaven?
As we enter the month of June, many things in church world are slowing down, getting ready for the summer break. Parish councils are having their last meetings, diocesan committees are wrapping up another pastoral year and even faith development gatherings such as catechism and R.C.I.A. are taking a break. I am blessed to serve as part of the team that are facilitating the sessions entitled “Dying With Christ, Living With Hope”, and we are ...
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A Prophet for Today
As I am sitting to write this reflection it is one day after the death of our Holy Father, Pope Francis. Among the many things to be admired about him, the ones I appreciated the most were how consistent his message was around caring for our common home, the earth, and caring for each other. He also gave us a new and refreshing perspective on what it meant to be a leader when he told us that ...
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Family. Are there any more complicated relationships in your life than the ones you have with your family? Either with your spouse, your children, your siblings or your parents. I know in my case, with regard to relationships with my siblings, they have probably been the most unpredictable, on-again, off-again, difficult to navigate relationships in my entire life. This is not to assign blame for this to any particular individual, it has just seemed to work out that way over ...
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You Are So Worth It
I have been blessed to be part of the team that writes these bulletin reflections for almost 20 years and while most of the time I stay focused on the readings of the current week or speak about something liturgical, sometimes recent events and encounters in my life compel me to share with you these experiences.
Recently I was present for a presentation by four women from “Naomi and Ruth” (they are presenting at Immaculate Heart of ...
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November – Depressing or Uplifting?
When I was young and thought time just seemed to be dragging on, my mother used to tell me that once you get out of school, time will fly. And the older you get, the quicker it will seem to go. Along with many other things she told me, this has certainly proven to be true. It seems like summer just finished, yet here we are heading for the middle of November already. I have heard ...
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“Would that all the Lord’s people were Prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Isaiah 11:29
If we took time to give it some thought, we could all probably think of the person or persons in our lives who have told us about God. For most, I think our parents would be the first to have introduced God to us by teaching us our prayers and encouraging us to call on God for help. In my home, ...
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While looking at the readings for this weekend and preparing my reflection, I was reminded of a story my father told me about something he and a friend did in his younger days. Apparently, when he was all of 14 years old, he had had enough of living at home and he and his friend quit school and boarded a train bound for Montreal to begin their “adult life” there. This is hard to imagine by today’s standards, but this ...
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How Do We View Dying
“Even though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4: 16)
I feel very confident in saying that almost everyone who reads this has journeyed with someone, or has known someone, who has had or has a debilitating disease that just eats away at them until they are a shell of who they used to be physically. When journeying with someone who is going through this, or ...
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Who is God For You?
Well, we are halfway through the Easter season. This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, and four Sundays from now we will celebrate Pentecost. One of the characteristics of this season is the celebration of initiation sacraments. In our parish grouping we had an adult baptism at the Easter Vigil, and we have first communion and confirmation celebrations coming up in the next few Sundays. There is much preparation that occurs prior to the celebration of ...
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