During vespers the other week we prayed, "Keep us safe from wolf and hireling."

The virtue of hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage: anger with the way things are, and courage to change them for the better. 

Saint John Henry Newman once observed that men always think of their own day and age as the worst. 

Thanks to my pessimism, I am generally quite cheerful (it is optimists who, because of their illusions, are most prey to misery).

Sometimes I think of football (soccer), though I have no interest in it.

Most of us know today's Gospel scene (Lk 2:22-40) as the Fourth Joyful Mystery: The Presentation in the Temple. 

"The Church gives thanks for each and every woman ... for all women as they have come forth from the heart of God in all the beauty and richness of their femininity..." — Pope St. John Paul II

Toward the end of the 2015 synod of bishops in Rome, delegates were invited to submit possible themes for the next such gathering, set for 2018.

In the popular mind, the Pharisees come across as the quintessential villains in the hero's story.