Lent is greeted by many as a time to curb the unnecessary busyness preventing them from experiencing a spiritual encounter with Jesus Christ.

Published in Faith

Ash Wednesday is on the horizon. While Catholics are getting ashes on our foreheads, much of the rest of the Western world will be buying chocolates and flowers. I don’t remember Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine’s Day previously. Google says the last time was in 1945, a little before my time.

Published in Register Columnists

In this final stretch before Easter, let’s return to where we began — looking at the entirety of Christ’s way of being, as an integral whole of truth, goodness and beauty. Any other way risks removing something essential. 

Published in Faith

With St. Patrick’s Day falling on a Lenten Friday this year, many U.S. bishops have issued dispensations from abstinence on March 17, allowing the faithful to enjoy the American Irish tradition of eating corned beef (or ham) and cabbage in good conscience.

Published in International

Every so often a song comes into my life that makes me cry in a flood of deep spiritual emotion. The latest one made my wife cry first. She heard it at a performance where our kid is a Grade 12 student at the Etobicoke School of the Arts. It was a choral rendition of Low Lily’s song “Hope Lingers On,” arranged by Andrea Ramsey. She inspired an online search for it. This article is best read to that soundtrack.

Published in Register Columnists

We humans need to be tended. Sheep are tended by a shepherd. Gardens are tended by a gardener. Even databases are tended by experts.

Published in Mary Marrocco

As we progress along any journey, we are faced with countless distractions, our own laziness or lukewarmness, and temptations that can lead us astray.

Published in Faith

When Christ calls Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life, it raises the question: What does it mean to follow that Way, share that Truth, live that Life?

Published in Faith

For all Catholics, the Lenten season holds a particular significance. For schoolchildren, the season was perhaps marked by pancakes in the school gym on Shrove Tuesday and worksheets on what kind of candy we wouldn’t eat for the next month and a half.

Published in YSN: Speaking Out

It can be a cruel, cruel world. The stories from Ukraine, at times either heart-breaking or heart-lifting, are testament to that.

Published in Guest Columns

When I first met Jesus at age 15, I was gung-ho for penances, self-sacrifice, offering up little sufferings, practicing mortifications, etc. In fact, I had picked up somewhere along the line that agony was the essence of Christianity and sanctity.

Published in Register Columnists

It may seem to us that just a few weeks ago we were celebrating the Christmas season — the season of joy. Yet, in the midst of an unusually cold winter and with snow still on our parishes’ parking lots, our journey of faith brings us to the season of Lent — a season of reflection.

Published in Guest Columns

In February I decided to read Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. It was written 702 years ago and remains an exhausting, thrilling ride of the imagination. In essence, it’s one long poem that reads like an adventure novel, though few novelists have ever written a story so rich and holy.

Published in Charles Lewis

Lent is a time for reflection and renewal.

Published in Guest Columns

VATICAN CITY -- People should fast from gossiping and spreading hearsay as part of their Lenten journey, Pope Francis said.

Published in Reflections