To mark the beginning of our Advent season, the first candle you’ll see lit is representative of hope, which, if I’m being honest, is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Of course, the hope we celebrate at this time of year is that of God’s promises made in the Old Testament and fulfilled in…

I’ve never been to a Mosque before. Today was the first time. I didn’t quite know what to expect: Christians and Muslims, after all, have historically not gotten along, and even today, with the religion-fueled violence that regrettably pervades much of the Middle East, one could say there is some tension in the air between…

Earlier this year, I wrote a post entitled “God … calls people to die” about a conversation I had with an old friend, but in the aftermath of my choice, I realised too late that I’d oversimplified the matter. The straightforward interpretation—that God calls us to die, to let go of the things we don’t…

Recently I wrote about what was perhaps the most powerful confession I’ve made in my life so far, but the story doesn’t end there. As I said then, it’s not like the Priest waved a magic wand and fixed everything. I also said that it freed me to live with myself, but that it didn’t…

Today, I thought I’d speak about something pleasant for a change: suffering. (Do you see what I did there?) I’m told that, as Catholics, we love suffering. This is certainly true, at least on the surface. We have a kind of morbid fascination with it, and the idea of redemptive suffering has deep roots in…

In keeping with the past few weeks and the theme of “perpetual conversion”, tonight I’m going to talk to you about the power of confession, and why it’s my favourite sacrament. Rest assured: I’m not here to judge. Like the Pauls who came before me, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom…

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know…

If you’re a bit of a nerd like me, then you’d know that at the end of the Matrix trilogy, our protagonist fights a losing battle against his enemy, Agent Smith. He keeps getting knocked, beat, and thrown around Matrix-style, but after he is dealt a devastating blow, Smith questions Neo’s resolve to keep fighting.…

One of the benefits of my MDiv program is the pastoral formation. I chose it precisely for this reason. I’d studied philosophy for four years, and at one point, we even talked about whether a thing such as a chair exists or if what exists is just the atoms that make it up. (My answer:…