As November is the month of Holy Souls, containing both the feasts of All Saints and All Souls — let’s continuously pray for all our beloved deceased. Why? Because there’s this thing called Purgatory, and you really don’t want to go there. Aim higher. 

What does it take to attain the reward of eternal life in Heaven?

Second Sunday of Lent, March 17 (Year C) Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36

Winter is here and I’m excited for the Advent season, but everyone who knows me knows that I love summer and I start counting down the days way too early.

One of my favourite bloopers from a church bulletin reads like this: “Eight new choir robes are currently needed, due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.” 

VATICAN – Pope Francis on Wednesday spoke about the hope Christians have at the end of life, which is found in God’s promise to be with us at the moment of our death, and to give us eternal life with him in heaven.

The Christian’s place is in the world, in order to proclaim Jesus; but his gaze is turned to heaven in order to be united to Him: that was the message of Pope Francis at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta on Friday.

The starry night sky has always been an invitation to ponder what is greater than ourselves. It is the closest most of us will ever get to confront the ungraspable notion of eternity. The night sky is at once a vault as well as an endless opening to the unknown and to God.

The Gospels tell us that after King Herod died, an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, telling him: “Get up! Take the child and His Mother and go to the land of Israel, for those seeking the child’s life are now dead” (Matthew 2, 19-20). The angel, it would seem, spoke prematurely, the child, the infant Christ, was still in danger, is still in danger, is still mortally threatened, right to this day. 

Daniel Berrigan, in one of his famous quips, once wrote: Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider carefully how good you are going to look on wood!

The world takes our breath away as we honour its author, the Lord

“Because, my God, though I lack the soul-zeal and the sublime integrity of your saints, I yet have received from you an overwhelming sympathy for all that stirs within the dark mass of matter; because I know myself to be irremediably less a child of Heaven and a son of Earth.”

VATICAN CITY - Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is more than a literary masterpiece, it is an invitation "to rediscover the lost or obscured meaning of our human path and to hope to see again the glowing horizon on which the dignity of the human person shines in its fullness," Pope Francis said.