A man is incomplete until he is married, and then he is finished.  A woman is incomplete until she is married, and then she is finished.  I sometimes begin marriage homilies like this to open hearts with humor and open up the profound sacrament of marriage.  The humor is in the double meaning of ‘finished.’ …

To get to the lost meaning of palms, you might go to your trophy case if you have one, or imagine one if you don’t. Think of these gold-painted golfers, or soccer balls or gymnasts.  Picture the Lombardi trophy (a golden football) or the Stanley Cup (a silver wedding cake?).  2000 years from now people…

You are going to a funeral and discover that you are the person who passed away.  Three people are going to speak:  A family member, someone from your church, and a friend from work/school.  Write out what you would wish for them to say.  Now plan your life!

Thomas Edison is famous for his inventions of the light bulb. We forget that he attempted the lightbulb 1,000 times unsuccessfully before prevailing. When a reporter asked him, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison said, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”  Our Lord and…

The obvious deception here is that winning can’t be everything, by definition it is at most half of everything.  The other half is losing, which our society tends to deny and avoids.  But that’s not healthy, whole or rational. We will face as many losses in our life as wins; and the older we get…

The problem with ‘original sin’ is that it starts the greatest story ever told in the middle, not the beginning.  We did fall and allowed evil into the world, true, but that is chapter three of Genesis. Chapter one is when almighty God made everything before us, galaxies, earth, oceans, whales, quarks and leptons and…

So if you want true Lent summed up in 250 characters or less, don’t go to twitter, go the beautiful and inspiring words of the Prophet Joel and go to them often. ‘Even now, says the lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your…