Can a childhood friendship change the world?  On Epiphany, when we consider the frontiers of our contacts with the human family, we examine the friendship of Karol Wojtyla and Jerzy Kluger.

My apologies, first of all, for not recording a Christmas homily.  -- As we contemplate Mary's role in the coming of the Savior, and as we consider the Savior's act of sacrificial love, we come to understand how personal the gift of salvation is, and we know that we must respond to this gift in our personal commitments.

Warning: About four and a half minutes into this homily, I have a coughing fit.  Joy is not found in arranging the circumstances of our life according to our taste.  Joy is found when we acknowledge the source of life, God, and as we celebrate the Creator-creature relationship.

The egos of some -- kings, for instance -- can expand to the point that they think they can do favors for God.  We consider today the ways in which God, who is in need of nothing from us, reaches out to us in our helplessness and provides for the birth of the Son of God into our world.

We may muse about "the end of the world," but our God is calling us to consider how he is pleased to re-create us and preserve in us the love which alone endures.

"Advent" denotes an arrival -- but how often do we protest that God is absent from human existence?  We can consider the ways in which we have been inattentive to God's presence.

What do we seek when we are powerless?  We hope that someone will exercise personal kindness toward us.  This is the very tenor of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, who is united with all who are cast down.

God is demanding.  He did not create us idly.  He created us for a purpose.  Are we willing to find out this purpose?

We must keep sufficient oil with our lamps so that we can keep peering into what seems to us to be obscurity, and thus to welcome the clarity which emerges.

In light of the scriptural expression of tension regarding religious leadership, a reflection on the sexual-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.