Light in Dark Times

Solemnity, Annunciation of the Lord … the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child…

Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary  Feria IV, Passion Week. Dixit autem María: Ecce ancílla Dómini, fiat mihi secúndum verbum tuum.

Pentecost, (Novus Ordo) Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Pentecost Sunday (Tridentine Latin Mass) Veni, Sancte Spíritus, et emítte cǽlitus lucis tuæ rádium.

Was she a hundred now.… One hundred?… How could that be…  in the bathroom, with her glasses still on… her eyes cleared… a face flashed in the mirror, this shriveled head of some strange old lady… is that me?

I was standing on the white deck around the blue pool, shielding my eyes from the sun… Her face was too close, staring at me through her black sunglasses, my bare feet burning on the cement deck. Behind me, a distracting set of two parallel walls encircled us and the pool area like a corral…

More than the therapists and techniques, this spiritual retreat in California helped ease the pain a mother has felt for the 12 years since she lost her son.

Dr. Leana S. Wen, the medical contributor to the Washington Post, lays out in detail the obvious reality: marijuana is profoundly destructive. Her article should be a wake-up call to all of us  – before it is too late.

It's early morning in the heart of Oakland's Skid Row, and Steve F. is coming toward us, me and Artie G., from across the street, bouncing from leg to leg, waving at us with one hand and balancing a styrofoam plate with a few pancakes in the other hand, grinning his maniac drug grin.

LONDON, Dec. 7 - The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years.

Three days before President-Elect John F. Kennedy assumed the office of president in 1961, outgoing President Eisenhower reflected on his two terms and issued his memorable warning in a historic  televised Farewell Address.

The newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower gave his first public address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953. You may listen here.