Legend has it that as an old man the apostle John’s message to people always ended with, “Love one another.” The word love is mentioned nine times in today’s second reading from John 4:7-10 and ten times in today’s Gospel from John 15. With this root command of love...

The “walk through life” that we’re all on whether we know it or not we’re all on that walk. But do we want to make the “walk through life” a walk of faith? That’s up to us. So, what does the walk of faith ask of us? My nephew recently had this conversation with a...

It seems every time the Risen Jesus appears to the disciples his greeting is always the same, “Peace be with you.” But this peace that Jesus offers, how do we claim it for our own lives? A 97 year-old Benediction monk by the name of Brother David who is recognized as...

I was over at my brother’s last Sunday for Easter. My nephew Bobby whom I baptized is now a strapping teenager. In the last year or so he’s put on fifteen pounds of muscle. My fear was that he was going to challenge me to an arm -wrestling match. Fortunately, that...

It was Easter Sunday 1954. It’s Bob and June White and their four kids, my sister Liz 8, my brother Jim 5, my sister Jean 1 and me, 6. Mass at St. Olav has just let out and we’re walking down the sidewalk in downtown Minneapolis. A reporter from the Minneapolis...

Back in the 150Os a man by the name of Ignatius (he’d later become a saint) had a dream. He wanted to start a religious order that would revitalize a church that had grown quite complacent in its zeal for the Gospel. Just when it looked like his dream would happen it...

It was the summer of 1936, the hottest summer on record. Eighteen- year -old Bob White Sr., my dad had hitchhiked to Missouri for the summer to take a job pounding spikes for the railroad. The great migration of “Okies” from Oklahoma to the promised land of California...

When I first learned about the Ten Commandments as a child, it bothered me to think that God could be jealous.  Jealousy seems such a negative emotion — easily capable of getting out of hand or pushing us to take extreme actions to hold on to something we want.  But...

This week we are looking at Mark’s account of Jesus in the desert. It’s very brief. It just says that the “Spirit drove Jesus into the desert. He remained there forty days tempted by Satan.” In Mathew and Luke, we have a more detailed about those temptations. “Jesus,...