From Season to Season

  Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." —Luke 1:38 The Gospels do not relate a single word spoken by Joseph, the husband of Mary. He is a silent, protecting figure standing in the shadows during the Season of Advent, coming into view only in the final days of this season of watching and waiting. And, while we do hear from Mary in the gospels of Luke and John, few of her words have come down to us.  Despite the fact that we hear so little from the parents of Jesus, we can nevertheless recognize one particular virtue that both shared: obedience.  “Obedience” isn’t a particularly popular word in our culture, including within the Church. Sadly, too many people have to come to associate obedience with some sort of blind submission. Instead, if we look at the history of the word, we see that it comes from two Latin words, ob and audire , and our English word “obedience” means to listen or to hear.  This sense of l...

Almost immediately after Pope Francis announced his intention to canonize Blessed Junipero Serra—the priest who founded a number of missions in modern-day California in the early 18 th century—a veritable firestorm of criticism began. One of the most recent voices to weigh in is Ricardo Lara, a California state senator who wants to remove Serra’s statue from the U.S. Capital’s National Statuary Hall , citing that the Franciscan Friar was "too controversial."  The statue of Bl. Junipero Serra in National Statuary Hall. President Obama’s recent comments about the Crusades at the National Prayer Breakfast , the ongoing debate about Serra, and even the celebration of Saints Cyril and Methodius (along with the Saint Valentines... yes, Valentines ) on February 14 have led me to reflect on how we view the saints and what they should and could mean for us. In a recent editorial on this theme in America Magazine , Fr. James Martin, S.J., wrote: Canonization does n...

Recent movies like "Amistad," "Django Unchained," and "12 Years a Slave" help keep the scar of slavery alive in the conscience of Americans. The fury that surrounds the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the events that followed, is another reminder of racial and socio-economic inequality in the United States and the pain, frustration, and anger that so many people carry within them.    It’s never permissible for Christians to support systems that prey on the weak and vulnerable or to allow unjust policies and ideologies to prevail. In our quest for peace and justice, we rely on women and men who are able to really see the world around them for what it is—the good with the bad—and who can name its wounds and the grace that is always at work in the world. These people are prophets. And, as Pope Francis has observed, the prophet is the one who says, “you are on the wrong path, return to the path of God!” Theirs is a message that “does not ...

There have been moments in the history of faith, which is at the heart of the human story, in which women, men, and even children, have made decisions about the course or orientation of their lives that have changed history itself. Like that “ shot heard ‘round the world ” of April 19, 1775, marking the first military action of the American Revolution, certain acts have opened up new pathways and modes of faith that have forever shaped the lives of countless believers through the ages.    The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio   Some of these might seem quite simple, perhaps because we know the stories so well: Mary’s fiat ( Luke 1:26-38 ), Saint Peter and Saint Andrew's decision to get out of their boat to follow the wandering Rabbi ( Matthew 4:18-20 ), and Saint Matthew leaving his tax collecting post (cf. Matthew 9:9-13 ). Others seem, somehow, far away and remote to us: Saint Lawrence presenting the poor, the Church’s true treasure, ...