Alexey Navalny was surely a hero. Perhaps he was also a saint. Little evidence is available to buttress the hope that he might someday be recognized as such. Navalny, the Russian dissident who died/was murdered Feb. 16, spoke little of his conversion from militant atheism to Christian Orthodoxy during his abbreviated life.

The world can be a cold, unfriendly, even hostile and angry place — online and offline. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not supposed to be that way. God created an earthly paradise for us, but when we reject Him and His ways, we reject our true selves, each other and everything we’re actually longing for. We become prideful and selfish. Put a bunch of prideful and selfish people together and you have a recipe for guaranteed misery.

My family and I visited the Holy Land more than 40 years ago and witnessed discriminatory treatment of Palestinians. After 75 years of such treatment, the Oct.7 event should not be a surprise.

If posthumous praise could be turned into retroactive votes, the late Brian Mulroney might be poised for resurrection as Canada’s prime minister.

Timely Lenten advice from the Archdiocese of Ottawa-Cornwall website

I would dearly like to see a regular column by Rev. Andrew Bennett alongside Fr. Scott Lewis.

A meditation on The Flavour of God written by Jason Openo, a permanent diaconate candidate in Medicine Hat, Alta., and posted on the Diocese of Calgary blog.

It’s easy to be convinced that current times call us to shout at each other, to disdain, to quarrel, to stage hit-and-run detraction ops against perceived foes.

Fr. Michel Cote is a voice for those seeking to be understood — literally. He is a Dominican Friar who has worked for decades as an interpreter. His small business has served virtually every multi-lingual Catholic entity in our country, from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to my own beloved Development & Peace - Caritas Canada. In his great service, it is likely that no other single person in this country has done more to help Catholics understand one another. Global Solidarity is near and dear to his heart. To us he is more than an interpreter, he is our beloved friend and spiritual elder. A humble man, he would balk at the idea of me writing a column about him. So instead of enumerating his many accomplishments, I would like to share the spiritual invitation that I have received from him in the form of a short Lenten reflection.

One of the most deleterious effects of our present culture has been our failure to engage in regular contemplation of what is real, that is to wonder at things. The end of wondering is not to gain complete knowledge, though this is the not-so-implicit goal inquiry in our post-modern world. We contemplate the mystery of God, but we cannot fully understand Him since He is God and we are His creatures. If we claim a full comprehension of who God is, what we comprehend is not God at all, or as St. Augustine wrote in Sermon 117, “Si comprehendis, non est Deus,” if you understand, it isn’t God. To contemplate does not aim at full comprehension. It desires to participate in what is a mystery to us, something hidden or not yet fully revealed.

Pope Francis’ address to a delegation from “La Diaconie de la Beauté” at the beginning of Lent.