Today is D-Day, that is, the anniversary of the massive invasion of Normandy by the Allied forces to begin their liberation of continental Europe from Naziism.  That was [80] years ago today.  It took almost exactly a year to bring about a surrender of the Nazi forces in Europe, and another three and a half months to force the Japanese to end the war in the Pacific. In today’s Vatican Information Service, there is a copy of the letter which our Holy Father has sent to Queen Elizabeth of England congratulating her on the anniversary of the beginning of her reign.  I remember that ..read more

Today brings us to the beginning of the month of June, dedicated as it is to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On June 7, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, in which we adore our Divine Lord as a human being who loves. He loves God the Father and God the Holy Spirit; he loves the angels, and he loves us, his fellow human beings. And because we think of the heart as the seat of love, we constantly speak of the heart in connection with love, devotion, affection, commitment, and human unity and deep friendship. Thus it was only logical that in the 17th century, when Our Lord appeared t ..read more

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit whom Our Divine Lord was so eager to send upon the young Church. As God the Father fashioned a human body out of the dirt of the earth and then breathed his own divine life into its mouth and nostrils to begin the human race, so did Jesus our Lord fashion a Church from his disciples, his sacraments, and his doctrine and moral code, and then he was eager to breathe divine animation into that incipient Church. This happened on the morning of that first Pentecost Sunday when the Spirit of the Living God — the third Perso ..read more

Today we Dominicans and many others throughout the world celebrate with special pride and joy the feast of our Sister, Saint Catherine of Siena. Only three women have been declared Doctors of the Church, and she was the earliest one to be so honored. The life of this remarkable woman was very closely associated with the Popes. When she was a little girl of only six, Our Lord appeared to her. In her vision, she saw Christ dressed in the vestments of the Pope and enthroned among saints and angels in heaven.  The beauty of the vision gave her a tremendous awareness of the connection of Our S ..read more

Yesterday afternoon, on Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict followed the tradition of going to the top of the Aventine Hill, the highest of Rome’s famed “seven hills.”  He went first to the Benedictine abbey of San Anselmo; from there, there was a procession to our Dominican church of Santa Sabina, just about a block away.  And there, Pope Benedict celebrated Mass and received and then distributed ashes. He spoke about the unity of the human race with the rest of our cosmos, alluding to the second creation story in Genesis 2:7.  For the Church each Ash Wednesday recalls the words that ..read more

On this beautiful feast day of our Church calendar, we discover that what we are celebrating has a number of important elements, each of which is the apt object of meditation and prayer. Let’s look at some of them: ·      This is the feast of the Presentation of Our Divine Lord as a 40-day-old baby in the temple at Jerusalem, in accordance with Jewish worship. ·      It is the time that Jesus is officially and formally presented to God his father in the temple, the dwelling of God among his people. ·      It is the mome ..read more

In the first reading for today’s Mass, we get a beautiful message of love and encouragement from God our Father. The passage is the beginning of Saint Paul’s first letter to the Christian community in Corinth, of whom he was especially fond. But because that letter is divinely inspired, it applies to all of us, and what Saint Paul is saying to the Corinthians, God is saying to you and to me. Saint Paul begins by saying that his fellow-apostle Sosthenes and he send greetings to the Corinthians, “to you who have been consecrated in Christ Jesus and called to be a holy people.” He goes on, “and t ..read more

Our national celebration of Thanksgiving is unique in all the world, as far as I know.  I’m not aware of any other country that has a Thanksgiving Day.  It is to the credit of the American people that we have celebrated it and preserved it during the entire history of our nation.  I’m surprised that the ACLU or some similar organization has not tried to get rid of it, since it is essentially religious.  If you are going to give thanks, then to whom are you going to give thanks?  By its very nature, Thanksgiving requires someone to thank, and, of course, that someone is ..read more

Exactly nine months ago today, on December 8, the universal Church celebrated the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Mother.  Since there is ordinarily a nine-month period between human conception and birth, we now celebrate the birth of the little girl who had been immaculately conceived nine months previously. This is a unique day in the calendar and liturgy of the Church; it is one of the three—and only three—times each year when we celebrate births.  We humans are usually born without grace, or as we say, “in the state of original sin.” The saints die in grace. So the death of ..read more

Yesterday, August 30, I spoke and wrote of our receiving of our religious habit on August 30, 1956 and thus beginning the year of retreat called the novitiate. Exactly a year and a day after that “vestition” or receiving of the distinctive garb of the Dominican Order, those of us who wished to continue our progress toward the permanent commitment which we call “solemn vows” took temporary or simple vows binding us for three years to this life of ours. That was on August 31, 1957. Then, when those three years had passed, those who continued to aspire to the fullness of the religious life and, f ..read more