I am alive! But after a liturgical pile on in December…Advent liturgies, Our Lady of Guadalupe (twice…one on Friday in Spanish with a lovely play…and one in English on Saturday), then Immaculate Conception, then more Advent, then Christmas, then Holy Family, then January 1, and then Epiphany, I started to get a bad cold! I [...]

For several years now circumstances have deprived me of family, friends, parish, my own space and place. Only last Christmas was I able to be at “home,” but health did not allow much. The “gouvernante,” Judy Ryan and the dogs last year did their best but I am certainly now weaned away from not only [...]

A Christmas Carol says that it takes getting the pudding scared out of us in order to appreciate Christmas. I was reading the life of the founder of the hell fire and damnation preachers, the Redemptorists, and saw that they were specialists in using the scare the pudding technique. Then there was something on Andrew [...]

In thevirtualoratory.com  I posted a brief review of a book called Winter, a Spiritual Biography of the Season, a collection of very short essays by writers ranging from Kathleen Norris to Basho. Even people in warm climates face interior winters of discontent that resist the sun and beauty leaving hearts buried in darkness, covered over [...]

The Church liturgy reflects the natural reality of the northernish part of the world…darker, too dry or too wet…colder. Can we make it through the long winter? Will spring just bring more disaster? The scripture readings from Daniel, the Gospel readings about the end of time, the Second Coming…try to cross out the happy shopping, [...]

ADVENT 1, Monday
Here begins a series of little snippets from the daily Mass through Advent. When I was an undergraduate in the dark days of December, facing deadlines and exams, the readings helped. So I recommend the whole text  but for these emails…I will just put bits in. Best to you as the semester ends, [...]