A true mob is terrible to witness, much less get stuck in. Something happens when humans are pressed together in fear and anger: a feral scent is emitted, an emboldening and anxious spirit. Once unleashed, it crashes over and draws down all in its wake.

Pregnancy. An injury? Run-of-the-mill event? Special circumstance? Choice? A recent report in the National Post highlighted the indignation of Olympic athletes in learning that pregnancy is often categorized by the I-word — “injury” — in their contracts.

Amidst the bustling liturgical season that runs from the feast of the Lord’s Nativity to the Epiphany, it is easy to lose sight of the memorial of Dec. 29 on the Roman calendar. St Thomas Becket, the 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr that the Church commemorates on the fifth day of the Octave of Christmas, is truly worth remembering here and now.

Leisurely work-day walks provide a welcome respite from renewed restrictions brought on by the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

It’s coming on Christmas and the Halifax-Yarmouth archdiocese is writing its own inspirational story of Bethlehem.

It would be a long journey, which I suspected would end badly. The American border had been closed for almost two years due to the pandemic, when the Bride decided she was going home to visit her mother.

Give until it hurts. That famous phrase was uttered by Mother Teresa of Calcutta at a national prayer breakfast in Washington 50 years ago.

Plunking down in a pew for Sunday Mass on Thanksgiving weekend brought a good deal of satisfaction and relief.

On a recent afternoon, the Bride and I met with my sister, Carol Anne, and our youngest daughter, Hope, at Holy Cross Cemetery, just north of Toronto. We had gathered to remember the second anniversary of the death of my mother, Anne McAvoy.

Then, miraculously, everything returned to normal. Or so it would seem.