As I was trying to think of a topic to write about on Saturday, May 21, I saw a column in The Advocate entitled “Number of Buddhist chaplains on the rise in U.S.” 

I miss being able to receive the Blood of Christ at Mass.  Am I missing out on any graces?

A friend of mine, somewhat cynical about the church, recently remarked: “What the institutional church today is trying to do is to put its best face on the fact that it’s dying. Basically, it’s trying to manage a death.”

We break bread around our church parish altars to unite ourselves to Jesus and each other.  We become his body, his church.  Through our Eucharist we renew our hope and strengthen our faith.  The eucharistic community is our home.  

Many Catholics consider May as “Mary’s Month.”  Why is that?

It’s hard for a child to have to go to bed in the middle of an evening when the rest of the family is still celebrating. Nobody wants to go to bed while everyone else is still up. No one wants to miss out on life.

 With murders increasing in America and military slaughter of civilians in Ukraine, this year’s Good Friday services called us to faith and hope in a world filled with cruelty, killing and destruction.

At the Good Friday services we venerated the cross.  Isn’t that idol worship?

When did we lose it? When did we lose that deeply-engrained, forever-sanctioned sense that however much we might disagree with each other or even dislike each other, we still need to accord each other basic courtesy, respect and politeness?

“We hope in the world to come.”  

As Jesus was dying on the cross, he cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Was Jesus despondent and despairing? 

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic we are all tired and want it over.  And now we have a war in Ukraine which is causing oppression, suffering and world-wide sadness.

In the (March 25) edition of The Catholic Commentator, you mentioned there were other ways to pray the Stations of the Cross.  What are those alternatives?

In his farewell speech in St. John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us he is going away but that he will leave us a parting gift, the gift of his peace, and that we will experience this gift in the spirit he leaves behind.

“Am I really doing anything special for Lent?”   We’re already in the middle of Lent.  In South Louisiana we plan for Mardi Gras so well and begin celebrating it so hard right after Jan. 6 with parties, balls and parades that we sort of stumble into church on Ash Wednesday surprised that Lent is already here and wondering what to do to observe it.

What should I do with the palms that I received last year on Palm Sunday?  How do I dispose of them?