From Season to Season

For the past few days, I've been in Dallas participating in the University of Dallas Ministry Conference . This is a great event that serves the Church in eastern Texas and western Louisiana. I had the privilege of offering three workshops during the conference: "Celebrating Evangelization: The Mission of the Church," "Celebrating Initiation: The RCIA Process and Evangelization," and "Praying With the Church: Living a Liturgical Spirituality." All three presentations seem to have been well-received. I'm genuinely grateful to have been asked to be part of this great conference and am thrilled to have had so many attend my talks. It was also nice to be able to represent Abbey Press at this event, as well. Good people doing good Church. What more can I say? This week will see me fly to Milwaukee for some personal time. More on that later. For now, here is my reflection on this Sunday's Gospel. This Sunday we are given the story of t...

Paul chose Silas and departed after being commended by the brothers to the Lord. He traveled through Syria and Cilicia bringing strength to the churches. — Acts 15:40-41 I didn’t always have the name “Silas.” In fact, for the first 25 years of my life, I wasn’t even aware that there was a saint by the name of Silas. The only Silases I knew of were George Elliot’s Silas Marner and Dan Brown’s menacing monk in the DaVinci Code . However, as I was preparing to make my first vows as a Benedictine monk in 2004, I was faced with the challenge of discerning three names to present to the abbot, one of which he would choose to be my religious name. I had settled on my first choice, but was completely undecided about choices two and three. A week or so before I had to present my selections, I came across the website of an Anglican parish in London: Saint Silas the Martyr. I was struck by two things. First, I’d never heard of Saint Silas and, second, I really liked the name. And so I...

My paternal grandparents grew up in southeast Missouri in the decades before Great Depression (my grandfather in St. Francois County and my grandmother in Iron County). Although I don't know anything about my grandfather's early education, my grandmother was always proud that she and her siblings had been educated by the Ursuline Sisters " of the Roman Union " at the Ursuline Academy in their hometown of Arcadia. When I was a child, I had a chance to visit the old academy with my grandparents and Great-aunt Helen. I remember meeting a few of the sisters who were still in residence, working in the preschool - all that remained of the once thriving boarding and day school.  Along with the old spring house and the Lourdes grotto, I also got to see the remarkably grand St. Joseph's Chapel in which my grandparents had been married in 1946. It would be nearly two decades before my experience of the Ursulines grew beyond those childhood...

Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But the Apostles went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.—Mark 16:19-20 Since his election in March 2013, Pope Francis has, of course, continued the millennia-old tradition of popes canonizing saints. However, he has broken with tradition by waiving the requisite second miracle for some of these holy women and men. As he observed in his recent flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines (on January 15), he specifically chose to move forward with the canonization of some of these saints because of their work as evangelizers. These specially chosen saints include the Counter-Reformation era Jesuit Peter Faber , the Brazilian missionary José de Anchieta , Ursuline Sister Marie of theIncarnation and the bishop François de Montmorency-Laval , who could be honored as the founders of the Catholic Churc...

Many will come from the east and west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven. - Matthew 8:11 In the First Reading and Gospel of today’s Mass , we hear, as if for the first time, the promise of the Lord’s Advent: “For over all, the Lord’s glory will be a shelter and protection.” The promised Messiah, the Long-Awaited One of Israel, comes to offer salvation for all God’s children. Isaiah saw the vision of a world cleansed from its fear and sin, a world where God’s glory would be manifest to all. In Jesus, this promise is fulfilled.     Opening our hearts to hear this promise in a new way this Advent, we remember the great missionary, Saint Francis Xavier . Inspired by no other motive than a desire to spread the Gospel, this holy, simple priest left the security of his Jesuit community to set out on a mission that took him to India, numerous islands in the South Pacific, Japan, and finally, to a small island off the...

During this Year of Faith, the theme of the New Evangelization has largely dominated conversations within the Church. I have been especially struck by how often the themes of mission and evangelization are misunderstood or ignored by many groups And, this isn’t necessarily a Catholic phenomenon; many Protestant communions shy away from the work of “evangelism” because of fear that they will be perceived as proselytizing or as having an out-of-check zeal. Beyond the fact that today (October 20) is World Mission Sunday , Pope Francis spoke about the apostolic nature of the Church in his most recent General Audience this past Wednesday. When   you also consider that these days the liturgical calendar has placed before us several saints who were missionaries and catechists (including Saint Luke the Evangelist , Blesseds Daudi Okelo and JildoIrwa , Saint Isaac Jogues and the other North American Martyrs , Blessed JohnPaul II , Saint John Capistrano , and Saint Anthony Mary Clare...