Each time I read a story about someone running into a burning building to save another person, I ask myself: Would I have the courage to do that? The fact is...
Wise Guides
Wise Guides essays explore how saints and holy figures offer wisdom for today. In each reflection, the author connects a historical person’s ministry to our modern spiritual and moral challenges.
“I’m convinced that my life has to end now, early as it seems, because I have fulfilled my life’s mission. I wouldn’t know what else I have to do on this earth...
I first encountered her in a cold stone church in Périgueux, France. She stood in a corner, a young shepherdess with a plaster lamb looking up at her...
I want to be like Sister Dorothy. Dorothy Stang, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, was killed on February 12, 2005, by two unknown gunmen. She...
Growing up in an evangelical Protestant family, I didn’t hear much about the Christian mystics. My religious background tended to equate mysticism with occult...
“Glory be to God for dappled things.” So begins “Pied Beauty,” a poem by 19th-century Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem praises God with the...
Thirty years ago, the fine theologian John Shea, teaching a course on redemption, introduced me to Flannery O’Connor’s fiction. I found her stories...
“That’s Jesus, Mama!” shouted my cousin’s exuberant daughter, Claire. Her mother was reading to her not from the gospels, but from the climactic scene of The...
When I walked into the L’Arche home six years ago, I saw the reproduction of Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on the wall. L’Arche is an...
As I begin to write this, I’m sitting in the observation car of the California Zephyr. The time approaches 10 p.m., and the endless plains of Nebraska recede...
