Could Herod Have Become a Christian?

I took my family to a Christmas concert at Parkside Church, an Evangelical community in Chagrin Falls. It felt like this interfaith gathering was meditating on the Joyful mysteries of the rosary. The songs selected for the program took us…

How Irrational Holiness Pays Off

Richard Robb is CEO of a $5 billion hedge fund, and author of a book titled “Willful: How We Choose What We Do.” He wrote it to help us understand the central theme of neoclassical economics: that people base their…

Our Father’s Loyalty is Our Christmas Gift

The Bible can help us plot our place in a fruitful family tree nourished by a royal bloodline. Matthew’s gospel traces that line back to Abraham, but the first line gives us the CliffsNotes version, short and sweet: Jesus Christ—the…

Wait Until God Unwraps the Life You Gave Him

About now many families are preparing for Christmas by wrapping the gifts they’ll give to loved ones. The payback for all this work comes when they watch the beloved recipient remove those wrappings to reach the gift so artfully concealed.…

There’s No Grandfather Clause

The noun “Grandfather” appears a few times in the Bible. The verb “to Grandfather” does not. However, if the idea of grandfathering someone did exist in biblical times, it could have appeared in this Sunday’s gospel reading (Mt 3:1-12). In…

Do we deserve a dying thief’s fate?

If you get to be king of the universe, you’d think that would come with some pretty good amenities. What does such a king deserve? The one we celebrate at every Mass got nailed to a cross. The Mass readings…

Throwing Ourselves on the Mercy of His Court

While shopping at our local grocery store, I saw a mother trying to do the same thing—shop—while also trying to foil her little boy’s continued attempts to knock displays over. The more breakable the better. Once he even tried to…

Faith outlives despots trying to kill it

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the U.S. population of Christians is dwindling as atheists, agnostics and the unaffiliated replace them (Religiosity, Church Attendance Fall Sharply, Oct. 18th). A few pages later, Jillian Kay Melchior observed in her “Houses…