Ever since World Youth Day 2002, my favourite Scripture passage has been the end of Matthew’s Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20. I think it’s because my middle name is Emmanuel. It means “God with us”. I love that Jesus promises us that he will be with us until the end of time. Today we celebrate a great ...read more

Part two of a reflection for the Solemnity of Pentecost. The readings are Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 103; Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 and John 20: 19-23. Read part one here. My first experience with the Holy Spirit was when I was about 12 years old. A new associate pastor arrived at our parish in Panama that year. ...read more

Part one of a reflection for the Solemnity of Pentecost. The readings are Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 103; Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 and John 20: 19-23. Tomorrow we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and in the readings we have two completely different versions of the same event. In the book of Acts, Luke describes the ...read more

On May 24, Pope Francis will become the 4th pope to visit the Holy Land, 50 years after the visit of Pope Paul VI in 1964. It promises to be a historic visit as our beloved Pope goes to Amman in Jordan and then to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Most of us don’t realize that there ...read more

Tomorrow,  April 2 we celebrate the 9th anniversary of the death of Bl. Pope John Paul II. The next day, is day-one of this year’s John Paul II International Film Festival, which has been taking place every year since 2009 in Miami, Florida. The inter-faith Festival is inspired by Pope John Paul II’s invitation to ...read more

Sister Marianne Cope (formerly Barbara Koob) was born January 23, 1838 and baptized the following day in what is now Hessen, West Germany. The young Sister Marianne worked as a teacher and hospital administrator in New York. In 1870, she was elected superior of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse. Seven years later she became second ...read more

I don’t know about you, but I stopped making resolutions for the New Year, years ago. It’s not that I wasn’t keeping my resolutions (well… sometimes) but that it all seemed so arbitrary. We should always be trying to improve, no? So why only do it at the end of the year? It’s sort of ...read more

It’s Christmas and all our worries- the food, the dinner guests, our families, the presents- seem to be multiplied. Jesus’ birth is supposed to bring us peace, but instead, during this time of the year, it seems that what we have least of is peace. And we go to Christmas Eve Mass looking for a ...read more

You would think we are a religious nation. Some 1 in 3 Canadians – adding up to more than 10 million people – say that they are attending special Christmas services. To put things in perspective, that total in our allegedly secular nation easily exceeds the number of Canadians who earlier this year watched the ...read more

From December 17-23, I’d like to share with you these antiphons, that you will pray with them and they will help you continue to prepare for the Advent of our Lord. May they become part of your Advent tradition as they are becoming part of mine. For December 22, the antiphon is based on Isaiah ...read more