“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). Our Lord shares these words with the Apostles at the Last Supper because in John’s Gospel our Lord gives a rather lengthy discourse. With that in mind, it is helpful to read His words through the lens that we are on the eve of His Passion and Death. “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” suddenly becomes a more poignant line. It is not a cute phrase to frame and hang on your wall. It is the summit of Christian discipleship. Love as Christ loves—laying down our life in union with Him, embracing our crosses for the salvation of souls, to know our Lord and love our Lord to the point that we can imitate Him and His love.   Click on title for full column.

Happy Easter, friends. On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, the Church celebrates Good Shepherd Sunday, and it’s a great opportunity to reflect on the nature of how we allow the Lord to lead us and what the role of the shepherd is. The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd has been the subject of many artistic renderings and meditations over the years, so much so that I fear that it becomes white noise instead of a moving image of Jesus’ love for us. Particularly for a cold-hearted monster like myself, it’s hard to maintain an affection for the image of the Good Shepherd when you’ve seen approximately 7,350 Precious Moments-esque renderings thereof. Click title for full column.

Easter always brings with it the joyous celebration of ordination season here in the Archdiocese, along with the immense scramble to remember who I have to text/call/write to wish them a happy anniversary. This year I won’t be able to wish my friend Fr. Earl Fernandes a happy twentieth anniversary because he will be on his canonical retreat before his ordination as a bishop. I guess that’s another anniversary to remember. At any rate, because of all these ordinations, I found myself looking at numbers for vocational health in different dioceses around the country. There is an organization that categorizes dioceses as healthy, borderline healthy, maintaining, and unhealthy when it comes to vocations. They run numbers based on number of ordinations per capita, parishes without a resident priest, percentage of priests that are temporarily serving in the diocese, etc. I imagined that I would see Cincinnati in the “healthy” or at least “borderline healthy” category, but I was surprised to see that we were listed as simply “maintaining.” It is a bit disheartening to think about the fact that one of our strengths over the last fifteen years is still not enough to earn us the rank of “borderline healthy.” Click on title for full column.

Happy Easter, friends. I have long said that priests are evaluated on silly grounds like whether they tell stories in their homilies or if they preach with or without notes. It doesn’t mean that those things aren’t significant, but they shouldn’t be the final litmus test on someone’s ministry. We like that priest because he’s X. We don’t like that priest because he’s Y. It’s just not terribly helpful in the long run if we view our mission as working together towards holiness. I submit to you, on this beautiful feast of God’s Mercy, that there are in fact two qualities we should use to evaluate a priest’s ministry that answer the question of whether he’s living out his vocation. Does he strive for holiness, and is he merciful? Click on title for full column.

Happy Easter, friends. Year after year, century after century, we return to the same great feasts of the Church, and you’d think that we would grow tired of them, but I, for one, never do. How is it possible that we hold the same fasts and feasts and yet continue to find new paths of grace by them? The cynic’s answer is that we have short memories and also have a hard time finding an insufficient reason to party. But the answer from the Heart of the Church is that God’s love is infinite, and we, as finite beings, can never exhaust the font of love that pours forth for us. Click on title for full column.

Having lived through the worldwide transition from manual to digital, I remember well being excited at getting an email because of how rare they were, and how dismissive we were of physical mail. Just one email rivaled the excitement of ten handwritten notes in the mail at one point in time. Nowadays, it will probably not surprise you to hear that I get disproportionately excited when I get something real in the mail, and every email I receive moves me one step closer to flinging all my electronics off a cliff and disappearing off the grid entirely. Click on title for full column.

I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on tv, but I do know that one of the balances to be struck in healing people is finding the sweet spot between allowing illness to hurt people and overmedicating them to the point that the cure itself hurts them. I have a priest friend that goes nuclear every time he feels a cold coming on, and in order to get ahead of it, he drinks an entire bottle of Nyquil and goes to sleep for ten hours. I do not recommend this. Similarly, when people with cancer undergo treatment, oftentimes the doctors are trying to set the most aggressive treatment possible to get rid of the cancer, even if the body itself is collateral damage. Click on title for full column.

One of the less appealing aspects of my melancholic temperament is that I tend to get hung up on imperfections even in the face of overall success. I vividly remember the great backhanded play that Lancaster Bible College’s third baseman made to rob me of my fourth hit of a game all the way back in 2009. I went 3-4 and had a great game, but it still sticks in my craw that I didn’t go 4-4 that day. But occasionally, even in a sea of internal negativity, a light sneaks through and allows me to sit back and be proud of something. This week, we got some feedback and reviews from our Latino brothers and sisters who have been participating in the Coram ESL classes, and the overwhelming sentiment was one of gratitude and excitement to be learning the language and working towards greater unity in the region. Some highlights: “I want to keep studying so I can learn more from the English class and communicate with our American brothers and sisters.” “The class is very useful and helps me to improve my English and relate to our American brothers and sisters. I’d love to have a field day or a picnic so we can eat together and have activities like a bilingual Rosary.” “The classes are very interesting, and you have opened the doors to the entire Latino community.” Click title for full column.

A recurring theme in Our Lord’s teaching is “You shall know them by their fruits.” Time and again Jesus warns His disciples that they must hold themselves to a higher standard of mercy and forgiveness than that of the Pharisees. He sends them out into the world with the expectation that they will generously give of themselves, and He will give success to the work of their hands. Our success does not depend solely on us, but we have to be unrelenting and intense in the manner in which we live out our vocation of priest, prophet, and king in the world. Click on title for full column.

Not long after I came here as pastor, Deacon Steve shared a parable of sorts with me that has impacted several changes we’ve seen in the last four years. Approaching Easter, there was a mother who set out to teach her oldest daughter how to make the traditional family roast that the family always has on special occasions. After laying out all the ingredients, she tells her daughter that the roast has to be cut in two and placed in separate pans. When the girl asks why, the mom thinks for a moment, and realizes that she has no idea why exactly. It’s just the way it’s always been done. So she calls her own mother and asks why, to which the grandmother replies “Because I never had a pan big enough for that roast.” In modern, better equipped kitchens, the solution had outlived the problem. Our own version of this was the older system used during the Communion Rite at OLR, where the people processed up from the back, because there was a time when every Mass was standing room only, and all the people had to be cleared out from the back so that people could process out of their pews, then to the front, and then back to their seats. This was no longer necessary, but old habits die hard, and people maintain such traditions. Click on title for full column.

Before I became a big softy who semi-regularly cries at weddings, I used to get a kick out of sappy married couples getting weepy at marriage celebrations they attended together. It didn’t make much sense to me because they’re already married, they have their own vocation, why should they be emotional watching someone else get married? But now, in my own dotage, and having gotten somewhat verklempt at multiple ordinations at this point, I think I understand it. There is something about seeing other people take the plunge into a vocation that calls to mind not only everything that has happened since we ourselves were that young and foolish, but also something that affirms the essential fact that God has cared for us from well before that moment up until the present. Seeing people give themselves over entirely to the life that God has prepared for them is a reminder of what He has called us to, and that’s beautiful, even if it is a bit saccharine. Click here for entry form.

I am caught off guard by at least six or seven days/seasons every year. I’m inevitably stunned that Christmas is upon us, despite its constant presence on the calendar. I have never once been prepared for the onslaught of snow. The only day that I seem to see coming every year is what I call “Baseball Day,” which is the first day that the world smells like baseball, and I buzz my head. So, it’s no surprise that Lent is now just around the corner, and other than the Lenten Mission and preliminary extra confession times that we’ve been planning, I have not done any personal spiritual preparation for this season of stripping away our attachments and growing closer to Jesus. Click here for entry form.

Well friends, I am writing you just at the beginning of my annual retreat, so please pardon the shortened nature of this week’s column. You are the only thing standing between me and several days of much needed silence. Click on title for full column.

Well friends, in another world, I would have written at length here about which priests are to be assigned to our new family of parishes come July, but since we aren’t allowed to announce it officially until the weekend, and some of you weirdos go online and read the bulletin before it’s printed, I’m afraid I still must speak cryptically. It seems that, as usual, some nerds just ruin everything. Click title for full column.

I was going to write a super cool introduction that ties in this weekend’s readings, but I lost my creativity somewhere this week. I do have some exciting news to introduce, so let’s just jump to that. (Then, check out a promise of prayers at the end.) Click title for full column.

This week’s second reading from 1 Corinthians picks up where we left off last Sunday. Last week we heard about the diversity of the Body of Christ, namely, the gifts: some people God has designated in the church to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then, mighty deeds; then gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues. This is absolutely true. God blesses each of us with different gifts. Click here for entry form.

Because of my vow of celibacy, there are a number of chickens that will never come home to roost, and many of the express or implicit warnings of my mom and dad throughout the years will not come back to bite me. That is to say, I was a particularly whiny, one-track mind child, and I had a real propensity for sticking with a point until everyone around me was deeply irritated. But even though I may hold the world record for repeating phrases like “I don’t want to go to Gogi’s house” or “Are we there yet?” the most times on a single car ride, I will never learn patience from hearing my own children follow in my deeply grating footsteps. Click title for full column.

certainly been times in my life when I had fewer responsibilities and was less tied down than I am nowadays. Just a few months before I entered seminary, a college friend called and asked me if I wanted to go to Turkey for Easter, and a few minutes later I had bought a plane ticket and was ready to go. Spending a week in a place so steeped in the early history of Christianity was a truly awesome experience because I had the opportunity to see the difference in what is emphasized in Eastern as opposed to Western Christianity. It is almost impossible to find a Church in Constantinople that does not depict Our Lord descending into the depths and reclaiming the souls of Adam and Eve from the tomb, and it is a sight to behold. Click title for full column.

One of the blessings of living one’s life according to the liturgical calendar and its seasons is how easy it is to focus on the mysteries of the Faith in the days and weeks following major feasts. For parish staff, Advent and Lent are major periods of planning, organization, and logistics that come to fruition in the great feasts of Christmas and Easter. The reward in the following weeks is being able to spend our time and energy reflecting on the glory of the Lord and the great gifts we receive in our lives. But even as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the time is upon us to snap back to both ordinary life and ordinary time and think about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Click on title for full column.

Merry Christmas, friends! I pray that the joy at celebrating the first coming of Our Lord into the world stirs up in our hearts a desire to prepare ever more fervently for His second arrival. We live between the mysteries of Jesus’ Incarnation and His glorious return, and praise God for the vocation we are called to live here and now. Click on title for full column.