“For our sakes God made him who did not know sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

Some Christians reading these words over the last few centuries have…

Appearances can be deceiving.  After all, Jesus was just another Galilean.  His hands were the rough hands of a workman.  People in Nazareth knew his mother.  Some even remembered the man they thought was his dad.

Yet when Jesus went…

In the English language, the special season before Easter is called “Lent.”  The word comes from the “lengthening” of daylight hours as we progress from the darkness of winter to the new light of spring.  But other languages, such as…

Peter.  Paul.  Isaiah.  Frodo Baggins.  They have more in common than meets the eye.

Of course there are differences, too.  Peter is a small business man, trying to wring a living for his family out of a lake in Hicksville. …

There is a myth that we must lay to rest, once and for all: Protestants are all about the Bible, while Catholics are all about the Sacraments.  While I can’t speak for my Protestant brethren, I can say…

At first glance, the scene makes little sense.  John’s strident call to repentance provokes an overwhelming response.  People of all shapes and sizes flock to him in the wilderness.  They are baptized in the Jordan as a sign of repentance…

The mother of the messiah has been called many things in the last 2000 years — the Virgin Mary, Our Lady, the Blessed Mother.  But call her “the Mother of God” and you’ll see some Christians squirm.

This is nothing…

Every year right after Christmas, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family.  There is an important reason for this.  It’s easy to think the “incarnation” means God took on a human body, that he appeared in human…

On the third Sunday of Advent, the penitential purple of the season changes to rose and we celebrate “Gaudete” or “Rejoice!” Sunday.  “Shout for joy, daughter of Zion” says Zephaniah.  “Draw water joyfully from the font of salvation,”…

Faith, hope, and love. St. Paul, in I Corinthians 13:13, says these three are the bottom line. They are called the theological virtues, the qualities that make us most like God.

We hear plenty about faith and love. But when…