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St. Nicholas, St. Valentine, and St. Patrick are, for many, familiar figures throughout the well known "holidays" occurring from December to mid Spring. Who are these “saints,” anyway? We usually think of saints as being religious, and as such related somehow to the God of the Bible. But is that true? Do we really know where saints come from, or how they are...
Nothing in this life is perfect, is it? Yet, many strive for perfection. Olympic athletes strive for perfect 10 scores. No mistakes or errors. But what about perfection in behavior? Is perfection required of a Christian?
With the election of Francis I of Argentina as leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, questions abound. Will he liberalize his church, perhaps relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests and seeking a greater Vatican role in the political life of Europe and beyond? Will he be the final pontiff before Christ’s return? Was his election in fact...
You’ve probably seen a house of cards. Some people can make amazing structures out of simple playing cards, leaning them together by fours until they have used a whole deck or more. However, no matter how fantastic the finished work is, we all know that nothing holds it together; the whole “building” is fragile and will eventually fall. Such is the nature of any...
There is a strange connection, a recurring theme in some well-known places around the globe, spanning different cultures with diverse religions. In Vatican Square, Mecca, Jerusalem and even in Washington, DC are found prominent, architectural monuments: huge stone obelisks which have their origins in ancient Egypt. It seems incongruous that such disparate...
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” That old saying that simply means one should not be unappreciative for gifts. Yet, many are less-than-thankful about the “gift” described in the news recently as the “horse-for-beef scandal” now affecting Europe and the United Kingdom.
Those of us whose lifespan goes back to the Great Depression can still recall the image of grown men selling pencils on street corners. The common attitude saw life as a day-to-day struggle for existence. The United States had stalled in its tracks, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a monumental job on his hands seeking to stir up a nation to get out and...
Those of us whose lifespan goes back to the Great Depression can still recall the image of grown men selling pencils on street corners. The common attitude saw life as a day-to-day struggle for existence. The United States had stalled in its tracks, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a monumental job on his hands seeking to stir up a nation to get out and...
In his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote of his horrific experiences as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Frankl, a psychiatrist, approached his imprisonment with a scientist’s analytical mind. He observed that prisoners who had a clear goal or a cause greater than themselves were the ones most likely to carry on and survive,...
At some time or another, we have all been temporarily lost—turned around, going the wrong way, on the wrong road, or at the wrong address. Perhaps we received bad directions, saw a misleading road sign or missed a turn, or encountered unforeseen obstacles in our path. How do we get to where we are trying to go?
Losing our way may be only a minor, temporary...