Contrary to what most of my professors believed, I sometimes paid attention when I was in the diaconate formation program at St. Augustine’s Seminary. Liturgically I may not have known my ambo from my elbow, but when it came to pastoral care I was totally present.

Alleluia, alleluia give thanks to the risen Lord Alleluia, alleluia give praise to His name.

The music had barely faded from our Easter liturgy when I walked into the hospital room of a woman I had been asked to visit but had never met.

There’s a saying statisticians love to trot out when questioned on the value of their surveys. “You are what you measure.”

When I started out on the Church on the Street, I gave little thought to some of the logistics of such a ministry apart from determining that it would be 8 p.m. onwards every Thursday evening.

Some nights it does not take long for the temperature to plummet. I don’t mean the thermometer, but the temperature of the street. 

It is a frigid evening, and the setting sun leaves the grip of darkness on the downtown area where hope and despair wrestle nightly for sovereignty.

There are few, if any, parishes in Toronto that had three shooting deaths in the first month of the year and followed them up with two more in the next few months. Add to this an epidemic of drug overdoses and a picture of lawlessness could emerge.