Author Archive
Windows of Salvation – Maria Regina
One of the first things you see as you enter St. Michael’s church from the parking lot entrance is the votive candle stand next to the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Most of the time, you have to squeeze past someone lighting a candle just to get into church! Just across the aisle from that […]
Continue ReadingEucharistic Prayer I: The Long One (or is it?)
One of the fond memories I have from my time in the college seminary was our friendly rivalry between those of Irish descent, and the better ones of German descent (I’ll let you guess which one “Grosch” is…). But we Germans would pride ourselves in our knack for German efficiency, the maximum output for the […]
Continue ReadingEucharistic Prayer I (The Big Kahuna)
All right, here she is – the Big Kahuna, Eucharistic Prayer I. <Editorial comment commencing> The other Eucharistic Prayers are beautiful and stuffed with important truths of our faith, but next to this one, they seem like child’s play. This prayer is the oldest, it’s the longest, and it’s jam-packed with stuff…which also means that generally, […]
Continue ReadingYour Prayer Checklist
Do you ever get people who ask you to pray for them? This can happen all the time. One of the things I try to do to help myself remember is to keep a little checklist of people to pray for, and run through the list before I pray each day. But let’s just say […]
Continue ReadingBad Shepherds in our Catholic Church
“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord.” We heard these words in our first reading from the Book of Jeremiah this past weekend, and they definitely hit close to home. I got home at 11:30 pm the night before, or I would have preached about this […]
Continue ReadingThe Oblation of the Heart
Well, there they go again. Just as you’re sitting down with your coffee to enjoy this wonderful bulletin article (because you’re not reading it during Mass, right? Right???), they have to go throw more vocabulary in there – “Oblation.” So what’s an oblation? Well, the best way to think about it is that an oblation […]
Continue ReadingThe House of the Rising Son
It strikes me as interesting how much the sun impacts our daily lives. It’s important for temperature, for growing food, for telling time, and it even creates mass chaos on the highways at certain times of day (Ever hear of a sun visor or sunglasses, people? Good grief!) Its amazing what impact that ball of fire has […]
Continue ReadingEucharistic Prayer III (i.e., the Medium One)
I think one of the most adorable things in the world might be when a child learns to read, and proceeds to read one of his or her childhood books to us. Usually, we don’t expect much content from these sorts of books – “See Bob run. Run, Bob, run!” – but nobody cares, because it’s […]
Continue ReadingCoheirs to the Kingdom, Coheirs to Eternal Life
When I was growing up, I was in Scouts with a guy whose claim to fame was that he was something like 154,723rdin line for the throne in England. It’s strange to think about, but if all those people mysteriously disappeared or all died in a freak balloon race accident or something, my friend, by right, […]
Continue ReadingTo Be in His Presence and Minister to Him
One of the questions that I get every once in a while is, “Why should I go to Mass at all? God is everywhere, so as long as I pray every so often and be generally a good person, do I need to go to Mass every week?” It’s actually a good question, and in […]
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