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Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Today’s readings When it comes right down to it, we have a choice. We can choose life or death, blessing or curse, the way of the Cross or the way of the world. The choice that we make has huge consequences, eternal consequences. The stakes are big ones, and we must choose wisely. Many of…
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Ash Wednesday
Today’s readings Behold: now is the acceptable time! Behold: now is the day of salvation! This is the way the prophet Joel calls the Israelites, and all of us, to repentance. Repentance is an important spiritual theme for Lent: in fact, if it were not for our need for repentance, we wouldn’t need Jesus, he…
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Our Lady of Lourdes/World Day of the Sick
Today’s readings Bernadette Soubirous was a sickly young woman. But on February 11, 1858, her entire life changed when a beautiful lady, clothed in white, with a rosary over her arm and a yellow rose on each foot, appeared to her and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” In the years since, the site of…
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The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time [C]
Today’s readings The parts in brackets were done at the 5pm Mass which included the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of the Catechumenate. Today’s readings remind me of one of my favorite theological facts: we were all created for something. I think it takes the better part of our lives sometimes to see what…
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Saint John Bosco, Priest
Today’s readings Saint John Bosco was a master catechist who knew the meaning of Jesus’ question in today’s Gospel: “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?” He was a priest who was concerned with the whole person of…
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Saint Thomas Aquinas, bishop and doctor of the Church
Today’s readings Today, we celebrate the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the pre-eminent theologians of our Church. At the age of five years old, Thomas was promised to the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino. His parents were hoping that one day he would become the abbot of that community, which was a…
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The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings I want to begin my homily by reminding you of the words we heard in our first reading from Nehemiah: He read out of the book from daybreak till midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand; and all the people listened attentively to the…
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Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr
Today we celebrate the feast day of Saint Agnes, a virgin and martyr of the Church. She is thought to have lived and died in the third century, but little is really known of her life. She is mentioned in the first Eucharistic Prayer in the list of saints: “Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the…
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The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings So we’ve taken down the Christmas decorations, and we won’t see the lights and poinsettias and manger until next year. Yet we’re not quite done with the Christmas season in the Church. Traditionally, some aspects of Christmas joy remain in our Liturgy through February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. …
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Saint Anthony, Abbot
When Saint Anthony – and this is not the Saint Anthony who helps us find lost things – was about eighteen years old, his parents died, and left him to care for his young sister and the family home. They had left him with an inheritance to take care of this. Saint Athanasius writes that…
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