Wish us a happy birth-year. This June the Daughters of St. Paul will celebrate a hundred years of participating in the mission of the Church, becoming the Good News of Jesus, and communicating him through the media within the world’s cultures. Our story would not be the same without one woman who was indispensable to its first fifty years—Thecla Merlo, well on her way now to being declared “Blessed.” Our centenary appropriately begins this year and ends next year with her anniversary—Febru...

In these days each morning at Mass I have been moved by the readings from the Letter to the Hebrews. Jesus our High Priest is the centerpiece of this masterful work from the New Testament. The writer tells us that Jesus learned “obedience from what he suffered” for us. He purchased our souls for God, and because of what Jesus did we have hope.In our coastal New England area it is easy to visualize an anchor holding a ship fast, despite the strength of the wind or waves. Jesus is the anchor tha...

My first surprise for 2015 was not pleasant: I spent the first few days of January sick in bed!Right after Christmas, I caught a bad flu and just as I thought I was getting well, a relapse totally knocked me down on New Year’s Eve. (I’m feeling much better now, thanks to the TLC of several sisters, lots of bed rest and a surprising amount of cold medicine.)  My second surprise of the new year was much more pleasant: the time I needed to spend in bed has proven to be unexpectedly fruitful! Bein...

Gadgets. I'm not so sure that we completely understand, or ever will totally appreciate, the power that instant access to information exercises over our thoughts and our hearts.Too much information and we max out or check out. We are not built to know all the crises of the whole world all the time. If our attention is riveted by the problems and pains of situations beyond our control, we might find ourselves more and more concentrating on the negative and the problematic and the dark situations ...

Merry Christmas! (Christmas is not over!) A Blessed New Year! (For us Catholics New Year's Day is the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God!) Each day of the octave of Christmas we celebrate Christmas again. The glory, the wonder, the awe of the good news that heaven has bent down to earth to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves: rescue ourselves from the sin that plagues us and from which none of us could extricate ourselves on our own. We needed One who was the Righteousness of God in our f...

There's something about New Year's that inspires hope in me. Every year, during those first seven of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I find myself actively and enthusastically contemplating the start of a new year. No matter how tattered (or forgotten) last year's resolutions are, I am confident that this year will be different. Maybe it's the glow from the Christmas lights, but snarky and cynical shadows of how well last year's resolutions went don't have a chance. It's a New Year, and in some wa...

Today while being prepped for a long dental procedure, my dentist began talking about preparing for Christmas. Having grown up in an Asian country, he told me that even though a non-Christian he had often visited various Catholic churches at Christmastime, attracted by the lights and decorations. As I settled into the dentist chair I listened to this kind, conscientious man. He talked about life and how he was trying to achieve a sort of perfection, a release from the hold that anger, envy, disa...

The Christmas season is filled with anticipation for some, loneliness for others, and for still others, stress generated by impossible deadlines on their "To Do” and “To Buy” lists. For all of us, however, the four weeks of Advent can help us reflect on our relationship with the sacred reality of TIME.As we wait for the celebration of Christmas, the Advent Liturgy and hymns often remind us: “The Lord does not delay his promise as some regard ‘delay,’ but he is patient with you, not wishing...

The question of what makes a movie ideal for Christmas, the day we commemorate and celebrate Jesus’ birth, is subjective. It often depends completely on the audience—among my Facebook friends, for instance, the 1988 thriller Die Hard came out as an unlikely favorite when I recently posted this question. But come to think of it, John McTiernan’s action movie starring Bruce Willis has all the right elements: It starts at a Christmas party and includes danger, a pregnant woman, bad guys, reconci...

Advent holds a very special place in my heart. In the Advent liturgy we are able to experience with all our senses the haunting beauty of this time of ardent longing and waiting. The smells of pine wreaths and burning wax, the plaintive melodies of Advent hymns, the promise-filled prophecies and Old Testament readings, the great Advent figures – they all urge us to focus on what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. In four short weeks we learn to wait, to hope, to be quiet, to prepare. How appr...