When Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881, he left behind novels that refuse to flatter the reader or simplify the human condition.
The Bible isn’t a set of moral examples or religious insights. It’s the record of God’s saving work, fulfilled in Christ, delivered now through words spoken and heard.
Ultimately, Scripture does not confront fear with commands. It confronts fear with a promise.

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When the angel told Mary she had become a mother, she replied simply, ''Let it be to me according to your word.'' Therein is a grateful acknowledgment that the Creator had formed life in her womb.
Indeed, our Lord pronounced no beatitude upon the man who is loved by his wife and cherished by his children, but He does say, "Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me," (Mt 5:11).
I don’t need to watch a blood-soaked story on CNN or visit someone of death row to familiarize myself with the beast of depravity crouched within the human heart. I just need to look in the mirror, to stare deeply into the eyes that are a window to a soul that has journeyed down dark paths whose only illumination comes from the fires of hell.
I lack the wisdom, and the experience, to counsel those who have been hurt so deeply. There is no pain like the pain of being mistreated by those who, above all others, you expect to love you unconditionally.
She against whom I preached, in her unexpected response actually “preached” to me three truths I have never forgotten.
Let him feel the heft of stone cradled in his palm, and consider the gravity of guilt cast upon the hypocrite.
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?
Never are we more Hollywood than when we admit wrongdoing. Our confession is scripted, edited, practiced. Move over Brad Pitt; I’ve got this role down pat, for it’s my version of me.
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.
A few weeks ago, the pastor of my congregation did something in his sermon I’ve never heard a pastor do: he confessed a failure. He had once been ashamed of his brother, he admitted, and had acted in a way toward him that was not in keeping with love.
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.
In Mary’s womb, Christ and His Church were wed; United as one Body and one Head.