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My Dear Family in Christ, Today, in addition to celebrating the 6th Sunday of Easter, we celebrate many of our grade two students making their first Holy Communion, and it just so happens that all of this coincides with the celebration of Mother’s Day. As a Christian, I have learned not to ignore such coincidences. At the heart of motherhood is the same sentiment that lies at the heart of the Eucharist: “This is my Body, given up for you. This is my blood, poured out for yo

Dear Family in Christ, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” The words of Jesus’ Good Shepherd Discourse sum up the spiritual battle that all of us find ourselves in. God our Father, our Creator, and our Saviour, give us life- not merely existence, which the Greek distinguishes as Bios, incalculable as that gift may be. Rather it is the abundance of life that the Greeks called Zoe, meaning that vibrant, abund

My dear family in Christ, The third Sunday of Lent kicks off a three-Sunday campaign of beautiful Gospel readings that the Church offers particularly to those who are preparing for Baptism at Easter. Of course, they are also perfectly applicable to all of us preparing to renew our Baptismal vows on the same day. Each of these three Gospels focuses on a particular aspect of the gift of our Baptism, that we may not even know, or may just take for granted. The account of Jesus

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” My dear family in Christ, One of the most powerful scenes of all time (in my not-so-humble opinion) is ‘Mufasa’s Ghost’ from the 1994 Disney film ‘The Lion King’. If you haven’t seen it, or if it’s been too long, I give you permission to temporarily break whatever Lenten media fast you have made to remedy this as soon as possible. There is no need to send me a thank-you card after, just pay it forwa

“ You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Dear Family in Christ, There is a metaphor that has become increasingly relevant. It goes by the name ‘Ant Wars’, and is attributed by some to American nature writer Henry David Thoreau. It goes a little something like this: Red ants and blue ants, when placed in a jar or a terrarium, coexist peacefu

When I was preparing myself for today’s homily I found a very interesting article on happiness by Scott Young. He asked: «How many times have you caught yourself thinking that you would be happy when/if? “I’ll be happy when I achieve my goal.” “I’ll be happy if I get more money.” “I’ll be happy when I have a boyfriend/ girlfriend/ spouse.” “I’ll be happy if I have better friends” ». Then he sharply observes: «The problem is that solving problems doesn’t make you happier. Happ

Today in our parish we celebrate the Solemnity of St Vincent Pallotti, the Founder of the Congregation of Pallottine Fathers, to which I belong. We will focus then on the mystery of his life and holiness. St. Vincent Pallotti’s road to sainthood began right at his birth in Rome on April 21, 1795. From his earliest years his devout parents took him to daily Mass and religious devotions in the many neighbourhood churches of Rome. St. Vincent Pallotti often used to say that God

Dear Family in Christ, What do we do when someone faints at Mass? I wanted to take this space and time to address a phenomenon that took place twice in our parish over the course of the past month. While relatively rare, these things do happen and it’s important to be prepared. As a church, we don’t exactly have clearly communicated protocols so it is important that we address this explicitly. I want to start by saying how impressed and proud I am of the way that we as a fa

As the Church celebrates the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, it gives believers an opportunity to pause and remember their own baptisms. The majority of Catholics have no memories of their baptism, and that’s because they were baptized as infants. For some though, the memory is strong, as they were baptized as an adult after going through the RCIA process. Regardless of age, what do you know about your baptism? Let’s pause and remember the facts of our own baptism: the wher

This Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany. Our focus today is on the magi. Who were these men, sometimes called kings? We don’t know a whole lot about them. The main thing we know is that they were not Jewish. And this is significant. A few days after the birth of the Lord, gentiles, pagans, were summoned to follow a star to Israel where the One the ages waited for was born. They followed the star because they were good men honestly seeking God’s will. It must ha

The Holy Family of Nazareth, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are put before us by the Church this weekend as a model for our families. We call them the ‘holy family’ but that does not mean that they did not have problems. Just as every family has to face problems and overcome them, or to put it another way, has to carry a cross, so also the holy family had to carry crosses. Their many crosses come to mind from reading the Scriptures. We can easily imagine how misunderstood both Mary a

The readings for this Sunday are an immediate preparation for Christmas. We come upon Joseph. A very disappointed Joseph. The beautiful young girl he would soon take into his home was pregnant. His life was falling apart around him. What was Joseph thinking? Would he have forgiven Mary a supposed indiscretion if she were not pregnant? But she was pregnant. The child was ruining everything. And then the angel came in the dream and told him that the child will make all things w

The preparations for what we have turned Christmas into bring so much stress that we forget what Christmas really is. Yes, we all know we want to keep Christ in Christmas, but the steps needed to summon up what we think are the necessary feelings and emotions have overshadowed the meaning of the feast. The prescribed Christmas feelings of love, joy and peace cannot flow from the solid month of stress, which is December. So, what are we to do? Well, that is precisely what Adve

Today’s feast proclaims him “Christ, King of the Universe” – king not of a single nation, not even of the whole earth, but king of the universe, king of the countless worlds, even of those that we haven’t yet discovered! It assumes he has an infinite power, unmatched by any human standard! And yet – today’s Gospel presents the scene of his proclamation as the King of Jews, which is far from this image of power and might! He is in fact powerless! He cannot even defend himself!

Dear Family in Christ, Though it seems a little early, I would like to get a head start on some of the ways that we as Christians liturgical seasons of Advent. Permit me to make myself a little bit less popular in this respect: Holy Mother Church concludes the Liturgical Year with the Feast of Christ the King (next Sunday), and begins the ‘new year’ with the First Sunday of Advent, (November 30th this year). Advent continues until our celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord,

Today the Church sets aside the normal liturgy of the 32nd Sunday to celebrate the dedication of a church: the Cathedral of Rome dedicated to the Beloved Disciple, Saint John. This cathedral was built by the emperor Constantine in 324AD, just after he declared Christianity a lawful religion within the Empire. The end of State persecution meant that, for the first time, Christians could worship in public churches, rather than in catacombs and private houses in secret. The Late

Dear Family in Christ, Father Janusz, Father Don and I recently watched ‘Coco’, the 2017 Disney movie inspired and built around the Mexican cultural celebration Dia de los Muertos (a quasi-Catholic celebration of All Souls’ Day). Central to the theme of the movie (read: it does not accurately reflect Church teaching nor Mexican culture) is the practice of remembering the dead through pictures and celebrations. There is an urgency to this practice in the movie, as the souls o

Today’s Gospel concerns people who go to church, but also those who don’t go to church. Those who don’t come to church sometimes torment us exactly because we go. During one meeting of Christian students some said: “People go to church with a pious face, with the Bible under their left arm and with a song book under the right one. They sing Hallelujah with a loud voice all excited; they receive Communion with great devotion, but they are hypocrites. As soon as they go out of

Dear Family in Christ, I wanted to share with you an abridged excerpt of a sermon from Francis Chan, a popular American evangelical preacher who made headlines in the Catholic world with a sermon that just seemed very… Catholic. In this Sunday’s homily, I’ll refer to Francis’ sermon in relation to Christian unity, what Jesus left us with and commanded us to do, and the haunting question from today's Gospel: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” God love y

In this week’s gospel reading, Jesus met ten lepers who pleaded with Him for help. Jesus instructed them to go and show themselves to the...