Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.   December 20, 2023 Read Mary’s Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55.  This is prayed every evening in the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours. Friends, Mary’s song sung at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel is a powerful prayer that proclaims the “Greatness of the Lord.”  Mary rejoices in all the God is doing for the salvation of the world and all the peoples of this planet.  God has mercy.  He cares for the poor and sends “the rich away empty.” Jennifer Hardy has rewritten the words to the popular Christmas Song, “Mary Did You Know.”  (http ..read more

  ADVENT PRAYER  Richard G. Malloy, S.J., Ph.D. “Spiritually we seem to be in an enormous vacuum.  Humanly speaking there is the same burning question - what is the point of it all?  And in the end, even that question sticks in one’s throat.  Scarcely anyone can see or even guess at, the connection between the corpse-strewn battlefields, the heaps of rubble we live in and the collapse of the spiritual cosmos of our views and principles, the tattered residue of our moral and religious convictions as revealed by our behavior.  And even if the connection were fully ..read more

  Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  June 6, 2023 Friends, This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  Along with Pentecost and the Feast of the Holy Trinity, this focus on the Eucharist plunges us into the central mystery of our faith: Our God is an incarnate God, a God with and for us.  In Jesus, God takes on human flesh, human reality.  Our God is as real as the heart pumping in each of us.  Our God is as real as the food we eat every day.  Our God feeds us as the Israelites were fed with manna in ..read more

    Become Poverty Abolitionists Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  May 31, 2023 Friends, Today is the Feast of the Visitation.  We remember that immediately after the angel tells Mary she will be the mother of the savior, Mary goes in haste to visit Elizabeth.  Mary soon bursts into the Magnificat, the canticle in which she proclaims, “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1:52-53).  When Jesus comes among us, everything gets shaken up an ..read more

  The Right to Life “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” (Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, 1948) Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  May 24, 2023 Friends, The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred and must be protected.  The Keystone of Catholic Social Teaching is the Dignity of the Human Person.  All persons have the right to be respected by all, especially by the laws of the state.  This teaching about the dignity of the human person enlightens moral choices concerning issues such as the death penal ..read more

  He is Risen!  He is Truly Risen! Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  April 12, 2023 Friends, This week we celebrate the event that changes all of human history, the event that gives meaning and hope to our world, a world so mired in despair, destruction and death.  Resurrection means the triumph of good over evil, the truth that in the end, love wins: love always wins.  After the resurrection, all of human history is bathed in the new light of peace, the new trust in our God who saves us. Bishop N. T. Wright, the world’s leading scripture scholar, was interviewed by The N ..read more

  Holy Week.  “Jesus: Crucified for All” Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  April 5, 2023 Friends, A few years ago, my sister was surprised to hear me say that I don’t think Jesus knew before his death that he would be resurrected.  He hoped he would be.  In some sense, he trusted totally in God the Father, that God would love him and care for him no matter what.  But it wasn’t like Jesus had some supernatural awareness, some inside information, of what would come from the cross.  He went to the cross as a human being, as a Dead Man Walking, like anyone giv ..read more

  5thWeek of Lent.   “Lazarus, Come Out” Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  March 29, 2023 Friends, What do we think about death?  Do we believe that Jesus has power over death?  Do we know deep in our hearts that Jesus saves us from death?  Do we relish and realize that Jesus will give us eternal life? Many years ago, as an undergraduate at Lafayette College, in a philosophy course, it dawned on me: either I would someday cease to exist, or I would continue to live forever.  Either I would someday just go poof and not be anymore, or I would be given the gif ..read more

     2ndWeek of Lent.  Transfiguration Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  March 8, 2023 Friends, Could you imagine a political candidate being visited by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and being told he or she is the chosen one?  Or Martin Luther King, Jr., having Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas communicate God’s pleasure with his work on behalf of Civil Rights?  Or maybe just an experience of an ancestor who communicates to us that we are on the right track in discipling a recalcitrant teenager? This is something like what happened to Jesus on the mo ..read more

   1stWeek of Lent.  Temptations Fr. Malloy’s Midweek Message.  March 1, 2023 Friends, The First Sunday of Lent we heard of Jesus being tempted by the devil (Matt 4:11).  IF, if, if… If you are the Son of God…  “You’re hungry! Turn these stone into bread!”  “Throw yourself down. The angels will save you.”  “Worship me and I’ll give you all the power in the world!” The temptations are to pleasure, possessions, and power.  The same temptations that can bedevil us.  We want to eat too much, to smoke and drink too much, to gamble too much, to do th ..read more