Bulletin column from St. Mary Catholic Church, in Crown Point, Ind. My dear friends in Christ, There are so many sites in the Holy Land where you can see Scripture come to life, and no doubt if you know someone who’s been on pilgrimage in the land where Jesus walked, they have their favorite locale, where they profoundly felt the presence of God or understood something in Scripture in a way they never imagined. Maybe it was the mystery of the Nativity in Bethlehem or looking

Homily from the 5:30 p.m. Mass at St. Mary Catholic Church in Crown Point, Ind. One of the real privileges of the past six years of seminary education was spending 10 weeks last year in the Holy Land, and about 5 days of that was spent in Nazareth. The Nazareth of today, it’s not huge. It’s a little smaller than Hammond. But wherever you are, you can see the Church of the Annunciation. It’s this huge mid-century modern edifice with Art Deco accents on the outside, but inside,

Bulletin column for St. Mary Catholic Church in Crown Point, Ind. Remember the Sears WishBook? Long before we could order whatever we wanted on an iPhone, mail carriers would deliver the 500-page catalog to every home in the neighborhood, just before heading to the chiropractor’s office. The catalog would usually arrive sometime just after Halloween, and I remember thumbing through it for weeks, finding exactly what I wanted and then asking Santa. A rather persnickety child,

Homily from the 7:45 a.m. Mass for St. Mary Catholic Community School in Crown Point, Ind. Who wrote the Gospel? What's the big red book called? Has anyone ever surprised you? What was your last big surprise? God surprised Mary. Here she is, just beginning her life with Joseph, and this angel suddenly appears. How would you feel if an angel appeared to you? This angel, his name is Gabriel, and he tells Mary that she’s going to be a mom, but not just any mom. She’s going to be

Homily from the 5:30 p.m., 7:30 and 9 a.m. Masses at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Crown Point, Ind. Stillness. It can be difficult for us to live in the stillness, life moving to a different rhythm. We come to rely on certain rhythms. You go to Mass, take your seat. At exactly 7:30 a.m. a light will begin blinking on the choir loft, the cantor moves to the ambo, Roseanne begins playing, everyone is invited to enter the song, a server appears carrying the cross, followed by t