The Gospel most people know is just a tame, domesticated version of the real thing. That Jesus is not demanding or incompatible with their already established hierarchy of values. Christianity can quite comfortably fit in a small box on the shelf, ready to be pulled...
Every year I turn into the Grinch. “I must stop Christmas from coming…” till the 25th anyway. Advent has been entirely pushed out by holiday celebrations that start even before Thanksgiving leftovers can be put away. There’s still the chocolate countdown calendar and...
There’s a point when we grow up, leave childhood, and find ourselves wandering in the desert. We open our eyes and look around. We really see this big world for the first time. It’s full of beauty and goodness, but also ugliness and danger. Some people may be shocked...
One Last Goodbye The last time I visited my grandparents’ house was right after they passed away. There’s no other place on earth more etched into my memory, since I lived there in my early teens and had visited so often the rest of my life before and after. Stepping...
It may make someone uncomfortable to say that a Christian is called to radical holiness. The shock would probably come when thinking of the modern sense of “radical” as some zealot on the fringe. It’s easy to interpret “radical holiness” as something strange and...
I know a great priest with an interesting hobby: restoring old, discarded brass items from various churches around town. He explained, “Most people look at these things and only see the tarnished mess, with the years of filth built up. But when I look at them, I see...
