Stories About Our Ministry During the COVID-19 Outbreak in New York City During the Spring of 2020 The New York Times: Their Calling Was to Lay Hands on the Sick. Then Came the Coronavirus. EWTN: Ministering to the dying in New York during Covid-19 The Federalist: New York Priest Gives Read more…
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). With these words, Jesus makes sacrificial suffering a condition of Christian discipleship. He says this right after his first passion prediction: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly Read more…
There are many good, true, and important answers that one could give in response to questions about the mystery of suffering in our lives. However, the best, most complete answer to all our questions about human suffering is found in the suffering of Jesus Christ. The suffering of Jesus – Read more…
The Old Testament Book of Job is about a good man whom God allows to suffer. The first verse introduces the title character, “a blameless and upright man named Job, who feared God and avoided evil” (Job 1:1). God Himself declares, “There is no one on earth like [my servant Read more…
Why is this happening to me? Why did this happen to my child? What have I done to deserve this? Is God punishing me? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? I hear questions like these frequently. As a priest and a chaplain to suffering patients their families, I get the Read more…
Every year we celebrate Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. We hear the account of the Lord’s Passion from one of the four gospels. As we listen to this account of the agony, arrest, torture, crucifixion, death and burial of the Lord Jesus, we are, as people of faith, aware Read more…
Like all human beings, patients receiving medical care can be identified with Jesus Christ by virtue of the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming man.. This mystery is expressed by the angel Gabriel’s words to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of Read more…
The patients I encounter in my health care ministry are not, for the most part, runners. Many of them can walk, others have hopes of walking or even running again, and some, sadly, must accept that their ambulatory days are behind them. For all these people, however, and for every Read more…
There are great joys that people in health care get to experience. Patients get well, receive favorable diagnoses, overcome difficult bouts of illness, and emerge from sickness with deepened gratitude and fresh perspective. Those who care for those patients feel that joy too, along with the satisfaction of having helped Read more…
I am writing this on September 29, the feast day of the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They are the three angels who are named in the Bible, whom God sent to his people for specific purposes. Those purposes are revealed in the meaning of their names: Michael means “Who Read more…
In recounting the events of Easter Sunday, The Gospel of Luke presents us with the beautiful narrative in which Jesus walks with the two disciples travelling on the road to Emmaus. The disciples were speaking to each other about their sorrow and disappointment about what had happened to Jesus. They Read more…
Throughout our lives, and most especially in the season of Lent, the Church invites us to reflect upon and more fully share in the sufferings of Jesus. The practice of praying the Stations of the Cross is a characteristic of this Christian reflection. As we pray the Stations of the Read more…
One of the saddest experiences I have as a hospital chaplain is ministering to patients who die alone. Thankfully, that is unusual. In the great majority of cases, the dying person is surrounded by family. Friends are often there too, but mostly family: the people who have been with that Read more…
“I am angry with God” I often hear this from patients in the hospitals. They are expressing disappointment, the feeling that God has let them down. It may be a woman who has prayed to God for healing and the illness has only gotten worse. It may be a man Read more…
For he assumed at his first coming the lowliness of human flesh, and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago, and opened the way to eternal salvation, that, when he comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest, we who watch for that day Read more…