A Deeper Dive for Authentic, Hopeful, Worshipful Faith

In a world full of chaos, our call is to see the world through the eyes of Christ alone to find unity as the body of Christ.  

"Everyone 'neath your vine and fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid."

Homily, 01.04.2026

"There are two ways of waking up in the morning. One is to say 'Good morning, God,' and the other is to say, 'Good God, morning'!" - Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Once in our world, a Stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.  – C.S. Lewis

It was God-With-Us. Not the God-Up-There somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives, but the God who comes to us in the midst of them—however far from home we are, however less than ideal our circumstances, however much or little our lives reflect the Christmas cards we send. –Barbara Brown Taylor

Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for spiritual joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live. –Thomas Merton

 It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time. On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other. –Maya Angelou

The Gospel reveals that life is always a mixed bag, but a good mixed bag. The kingdom “does not admit of [full] observation” here. Only in eternity are all shadows resolved. Here we live in faith and trust in the in-between. –Richard Roh

We may find ourselves in social or political contexts that block any attempt at dialogue. Such situations challenge us to persevere in our efforts to create the conditions necessary for dialogue. To persist in this effort requires serenity, patience, and clarity of purpose. As the conditions for dialogue are being established to open a path toward transformation, our creative and steadfast presenc...

True Christianity is growth in the life of the Spirit, a deepening of the new life, a continuous rebirth, in which the exterior and superficial life of the ego-self is discarded like an old snake skin and the mysterious, invisible self of the Spirit becomes more present and more active. The true Christian rebirth is a renewed transformation, a “Passover” in which [a person] is progressively libera...

God is a missionary God; God’s mission has a church. Focusing primarily on the church’s mission without a larger discernment of the church’s identity with respect to God’s mission will get us nowhere. Instead, we need to place God’s mission as lived out with respect to a holistic gospel into dialogue with the realities of contemporary culture. –Craig Van Gelder, Craig and Dwight Zscheile

Focus:   Discernment is more than gathering and analyzing data. Discernment develops the capacity to perceive where God is at work in the global and local situation in order to choose what better leads to the glory of God, which is nothing other than the fullness of human life. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.

An awareness is growing that humanity is living through a profound change of epoch. The consequences of this change sometimes take us by surprise. We must humbly recognize the inadequacy of our intellectual tools for measuring the effects of epochal change, understanding the present, and visualizing the future. Uncertainty is gaining ground in personal and social life. Uncertainty then sparks fear...

Because we live with hope, we are able to see that what appears to the ordinary eye to be impossible, is possible when we allow the love of God to work in human life. Of course, to place all our hope in him means more than believing that what looks impossible is possible. It means living already, now, as we hope that the life of all will be. The one who has hope not only has faith that another wor...

We seem to be faced with a fundamental choice of whether we are going to fully embrace the reality that God has placed before us, or choose to believe and act based on the gaslighting of others. This is a primary ethical choice for Christians.

Typically, we are blind to countless evidence of God’s grace; by nature, we are so dull and rebellious of heart that we take for granted our creation, preservation, and salvation as entitlements (cf. Ps 103:2; Isa 40:21; Rom 1:21). In the biblical tradition it is different: “believers do not look at the universe and its fate from the angle of their personal interests but rather contemplate it as i...

Western culture has tended to be an extroverted culture and a “can-do” culture.  Prayer too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be – an interior practice to change the one who is praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious,...

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