Divine Mercy Sunday is a relatively new addition to the Church’s liturgical year. In 2000 Saint John Paul II named the Sunday after Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday (flowing from a devotion to Christ’s Divine Mercy by a Polish nun, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska). So what do we celebrate? First, we celebrate that for Christians God […]

Celebrating the resurrection of Jesus is something we may hold in our hearts every day. We know that His resurrection makes possible our own eternal life. Therefore, Easter is celebrated well beyond Easter Sunday – for a season of 50 days, from Easter to Pentecost, this year from Sunday, April 16 – to Pentecost Sunday,

For those of us who attend Holy Saturday’s Easter Vigil service it may seem long and tedious. But this liturgy, through Old Testament and New Testament readings, leads us through salvation history from Creation to our new creation at Easter and then with the baptism of the catechumens we witness new creations. Easter is normally

I recently returned from Cameroon, West Africa, visiting out Mission Doctors and our partners in mission.  I traveled all over the Northeastern area of the country and visited Padre Pio Maternity Hospital in Douala, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Shisong and St. Martin de Porres Hospital in Njinikom.  After days of travel, miles and miles of roads

Good Friday- not good because of the weather or receiving good news at work or winning the lottery- but ‘good’ because it reveals to us in painful detail the depth of God’s love for each person. Through horrific suffering- which we hear in today’s reading from the Gospel of John- we learn that God accepted

We all have ceremonies to remember special events whether birthdays, weddings or the death anniversaries of loved ones. It seems very human to remember the past as the past –whether for nations or individuals- always blends into and raises its head in the present. Today is a remembrance for the Christians. We remember the night

Only one more week left of our Lenten journey! Did we take the time and make the effort to reflect, begin some changes and, most importantly, ask the Lord for grace as well as increased sight to see Him in our daily lives. Like the end of any journey, we are probably ready for a

In John’s Gospel we hear the story of Jesus raising Lazarus, a good friend, who had been dead four days. The story is meant to convey not only the power of Jesus over death but also give the reader a hint of Jesus’ own Resurrection. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said but

Another well-known Gospel story from the Gospel of John, namely Jesus’ healing of the blind man at the pool of Siloam. The story is long but basic: Jesus encounters a blind man and heals him; he is brought before the Jewish officials who are confounded by the cure (and on the Sabbath), interrogate the man

Today is the United Nations World Water Day and the emphasis this year is on wastewater. Certainly an unglamorous topic and one we may prefer not to think about; after all, isn’t that why they put handles on our toilets? You press them and the problem goes away. This is not the case, though, for