(For the audio version of this post, please visit ) When a child gives a parent the key chain they made in art class, mom or dad might call it cute. After all, this gift has no intrinsic value—a few…
(For the audio version of this post, please visit ) “Foreigner” was as nasty an epithet in the Old Testament as “Illegal Alien” has become today. Then Isaiah came along. He made that unholy name irrelevant. In Sunday’s first reading…
(For the audio version of this post, please visit: ) One of the first prayers Catholic parents teach their children is the one to our guardian angel. It’s also one of the first prayers adults stop saying as we get…
(For the audio version of this blog, please visit ) There’s something gratuitously beautiful about how God feeds us. Gratuitous is also how science describes nature’s indescribable beauty. The colors and patterns in a butterfly’s wings serve no practical purpose…
(For the audio version of this post, please visit: ) Our most beloved fairy tales teach lessons about the dangers of wishes. Stories like “Aladdin and his Magic Lamp” and “The Monkey’s Paw” involve people given three of them. Thanks…
(For the audio version of this post, please select: ) “The Bad Seed” is one of the scariest horror stories ever written. Its author William March makes us ponder, what if a child could be born bad—even murderous—and no amount…
For the audio version of this blog, visit: Them that’s got shall haveThem that’s not shall loseSo the Bible says and it still is newsMama may have, Papa may haveBut God bless the child that’s got his own, that’s…
[Originally posted here 12 years ago.] (For the audio version of this post, visit ) Poor King Herod. Which one? Take your pick. They were all pathetic individuals in their lust for power under the boot of the Roman Empire. …
(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: ) Read the entire chapter from which Sunday’s first reading came (2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a) and one might think the prophet Elisha was the Old Testament version of Christ. He brings…
(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: ) Bullying has become an art on social media. It takes many forms, from the disguised insults of “frenemies” to the open mockery of cyber harassers. But this is an ancient…