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ONCE A PRIEST, ALWAYS A PRIEST

A young man had a vocation to the priesthood, so his bishop sent him to study in Rome. After being duly ordained priest and serving in the diocese, his bishop sent him to Rome again for further study....

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TO SERVE AS JESUS SERVED, TO LOVE AS HE LOVED (Service as the Only Truly...

"Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me 'teacher' and 'master,' and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one...

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JESUS' STORY IS OUR STORY (Prayerful Thoughts on Good Friday)

Why doesn't the Bible say anything about the life of Jesus from ages 12-30? Well, actually the last thing we hear about him is that he was taken by his parents to the temple and he gets separated from...

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THE SILENCE OF HOLY SATURDAY

Silence can be terrifying. We moderns no longer seem used to it. But if there is one word that can capture what Holy Saturday is all about, it would perhaps be that: silence. As Christ lay within the...

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EASTER FREEDOM: IN CHRIST WHO HAS CONQUERED DEATH, I CAN CONQUER LIFE AND...

The story is told (apocryphal most likely) of a young Harry Houdini who, during one of his routines, failed to open the door to the prison cell in which he had been locked despite the door not even...

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"BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ, TEACH WHAT YOU BELIEVE, PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH."...

“Study hard. Learn to integrate what you study. That’s the only way you can be sure that what you’ll be preaching to  God's people as a priest will have substance and won’t simply be fluff”.These were...

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FUNDARI AMICITIAM: Friendship, Fairness, and the Dangers of Favoritism in...

"Teaching is imposed on us by the necessity of love."  - Saint Augustine of Hippo What role does friendship play in the work of education or, in the case of persons engaged in seminary ministry,...

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FUNDARI AMICITIAM; Friendship, Fairness, and the Dangers of Favoritism in...

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends... I no longer call you servants, I call you friends." (John 15:13,15)The kind of friendship Jesus offered his disciples...

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THE EDUCATOR'S ROLE IS TO LEAD THE STUDENT, NOT TO HIMSELF, BUT TO CHRIST,...

"Instruction is completed by love."- Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae [1] Authentic friendship which seeks the good, not of oneself, but of the other, is a vital tool in education and seminary formation...

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"BY HIS WOUNDS, WE ARE HEALED." (In Touching Jesus' wounds, we too, like...

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go...

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"I HAVE NEITHER SILVER NOR GOLD, BUT WHAT I HAVE, I GIVE TO YOU." (A Letter...

“Receive the book of the Gospels whose herald you now are. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, practice what you teach”. These words will be spoken to you by the bishop on your day of...

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CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TAKE THE LEAP, GOD WILL BE THERE TO CATCH YOU. (A Letter...

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13)"One day you’ll wake up in the morning and say to yourself, ‘Graduation’s finally here!’"Do you remember us talking about that in...

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WIND BENEATH OUR WINGS (Reflections on the Solemnity of Pentecost, Acts...

On the 10th of June 2005, the heaviest and most spacious civil aircraft ever built landed at the Miami International Airport amid great fanfare and a spectacular welcome. The inaugural flight into...

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TO NEVER BE CALLED "DAD". (Ruminations on Generativity, Fatherhood, and...

"Simon, son of John, do you love me?... Feed my sheep". (John 21:17)These past couple of months, yet another group of my former students were  ordained, some to the transitional diaconate, the rest to...

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"With the 'failures' and 'losers' of this world, I choose to cast my lot."...

I was once asked a very interesting question by one very ‘perplexed’ student in a theology class at university a number of years ago.  We were analyzing the structure of the Beatitudes where Jesus...

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OF KINGS, PROSTITUTES, THIEVES, AND PAUPERS (Reflections on the Solemnity of...

It is perhaps one of the strangest things about Jesus that the very last recorded exchange of words he had before he died, was a conversation, not with a decent and respectable person, but with a...

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MINDFULNESS OF GOD'S PRESENCE (A Brief Reflection on the Solemnity of the...

The church has always taught that anything said about Mary is first and foremost, a statement about Christ. Today’s feast is no exception. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is a statement about...

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WE ARE MERELY POINTERS, JESUS ALONE IS THE POINT (Reflections on John the...

A few years ago, when I began teaching at Providence College in Rhode Island, I remember standing outside the room before classes started. I wasn’t dressed in clerics that day, and I had a heavy jacket...

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BECAUSE CHRIST HAS RISEN, LIFE HAS MEANING, AND NONE OF THE GOOD WE DO IS...

St. Paul asks a very interesting question in one of his Letters:What would it be like if Jesus did not rise from the dead?In the last chapter of his book, “The Myth of Sysiphus”, the atheist...

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Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal...

The human heart is a bottomless pit. It is never satisfied. The human person is an insatiable desire for more. Nothing can ever completely satisfy him, nothing can really give him the fulfillment and...

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Letters to the 62 Brave Young Men with whom I had the Privilege to Stand in...

"In the midst of the flames the three young men cried out with one voice: "Blessed be God. Alleluia"." (From the Breviary)Dear Zeke,The past couple of weeks have been very tough for our Church, haven’t...

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JESUS IS IN THE EYE OF THE STORM; BUT WE HAVE TO BELIEVE. (Homily for the...

On the night the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report came out, I received text message after text message from these young men, these seminarians, your sons. They were texting me about their distress, their...

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NO CHRIST WITHOUT THE CROSS, NO CROSS WITHOUT THE CRUCIFIED (Homily for the...

Cutting off hands and feet, gouging out eyes…Jesus uses some rather shocking words in today’s gospel. The Jewish rabbis often used exaggeration as a teaching device in order to drive home an important...

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With those the world judges "failures" and "losers", I have chosen to cast my...

I was once asked a very interesting question by one very ‘perplexed’ student in a theology class at university a number of years ago.  We were analyzing the structure of the Beatitudes where Jesus...

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When life gets too complicated, simplify. (A Brief Reflection on Christmas Eve)

On this most holy of nights, the all-powerful Son of the Almighty God, chose to be born as a simple child, born to simple parents, in a poor and simple stable, visited by poor and simple shepherds.And...

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