The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

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When Jesus was baptized, his Father’s voice fell from heaven, proclaiming, “You are my beloved Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” (Mk 1:11). But there in the wilderness it did not seem so, did it?
The prophets had foretold, His coming Incarnation; The Word would make our flesh, His only habitation.
If I am so bound up in the history of the first man, all the way back at the dawn of creation, how can I not also be bound up in the more recent history of my family?
He had a way with words, this Preacher, a way that well-nigh sent Him plummeting headlong down a nearby cliff. What got Him in trouble was quite simply telling the truth – always a dangerous activity, for men prefer that you lie to them, especially if the truth exposes them for what they are.
The Bible of Jesus and the apostles was therefore the Old Testament. On the basis of these writings, they confessed the totality of who the Messiah is and what He does.
People take off their public masks when around relatives. They let their darkness shine. That’s why Manuel spends his December 25 in the graveyard, talking to the dead.
Perhaps part of the mistake we’ve made is in forgetting that the first Christmas, the actual birthday of Jesus, started out as the worst of times.
A few people can endure a Job-like hell, get up, bless God, and face the future stronger than ever. Most of us aren’t such saints. We hobble along, half-walking, half-crawling into the will-be from the what-was.
Our hearts are half Amish at times, hankering to live in the past, for we dislike the present or fear the future. But therein lies a grave danger, for nostalgia can easily become the gateway drug to despair.
In Mary’s womb, Christ and His Church were wed; United as one Body and one Head.
Sometimes, the best sermons aren’t preached by preachers at all.