Sacrament of Reconcilation

On the fifth Sunday of Easter in the Byzantine rite we commemorate the Samaritan woman at the well who meets Jesus and hears the Gospel preached. To Jews such as Our Lord the Samaritans were distinctly the “other,” worshipping God in a way that the Jews rejected. Among the many important aspects of this Gospel passage one that merits greater discussion in our day is the preaching of the Gospel to those who are not “us.” We encounter in the Gospels many occasions when Jesus meets non-Jews such as when He meets the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), or when the Roman centurion requests healing for his slave (Luke 7:2-10), or when He heals the Gerasene. Our Lord does not limit His saving ministry to His fellow Jews; He comes as the promised Messiah calling all people to salvation.

As a bilingual kid with a father who couldn’t speak English and a mother who couldn’t speak French, language always seemed to be a battleground. With parents always comically mangling each other’s language I often struggled in school to remember what was grammatically accurate versus what was commonly used at home. Franglais wasn’t in any dictionary I knew of.

Halton Regional Police Service’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit (I.C.E.) has laid 28 additional child pornography charges on a former Catholic elementary school teacher who has already been in custody since Jan. 5.

There is a properly horrified response to the accusations and speculations around Mississauga’s Kenneth Law, who appeared in court this week charged with assisting suicide through sale of sodium nitrate.

Nicole Scheild is executvie director of Canadian Physicians for Life. This is taken from an eblast she sent to supporters earlier this year.

Peter Rego was 15 years old and growing up in Pakistan when the artistic bug first bit him.

Rose of Sharon aids in turning young ladies into loving moms.

This year’s Earth Day announcement of organizations shedding their investments in fossil fuels rang up another 31 religious institutions globally divesting from oil, gas and coal, and a Canadian order is expected to soon add to that number.

Campaign Life Coalition is calling on Canadians to emulate the United States in extending rights to all human beings, particularly those in the womb.

Lay-chaplain Michael Buhler sees the effects of addiction each day on the rough downtown streets of Timmins, Ont.