The first meal ever recorded in the Bible was pretty sparse: a mythical piece of fruit. Today this would amount to a healthy snack. At the time, it was the...
Scripture
I’d like to nominate Anthony of the Desert as this year’s patron saint. This third- and fourth-century Egyptian—he lived to be 105—kick-started the famous...
The logo for last year’s Year of Mercy, designed by Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, depicts the Good Shepherd, who in his mercy takes humanity on his shoulders...
Life is more than we bargain for. The election results last November proved that, in an hour of frank astonishment for every side of the social debate. Behold...
No one has asked me, but I am ready with a jim-dandy slogan for promoting good books: Don’t read spiritual books during Lent. Not only will this slogan put...
The Catholic canon of the Bible contains 73 books. Three of them bear women’s names: Ruth, Judith, and Esther. These three texts also make the actions of women...
You may have seen the bumper sticker: “Eve was framed.” The biblical perspective on women is set at a rather low bar in the opening chapters of Genesis. Simply...
Scripture scholar and Dominican Sister Barbara Reid took her first Bible course when she was a junior in college. It was an elective. “I was just so amazed at...
When someone wishes us a Happy New Year, too often the spirit of the cynic is tempted to rise up from its subterranean swamp in our souls. What’s so new about...
My all-time favorite footnote involves a scholar’s wry gloss on the maps used by Jesus. Commenting on a passage in which Jesus had to cross into Gentile...
