Frank Desiano

Pope Paul VI, in 1974, called a world-wide meeting of bishops to ask them to talk about evangelization and the Church.  His concern was that the zeal and energy behind our bringing the Gospel to other had slipped.  The next year he produced a document, On Evangelization in the Modern World, that affirmed for Catholics […]

One of the most remarkable selections in our book of Readings for Mass (the Lectionary) is the one chosen for Holy Thursday.  The particular feast beings the three-day remembrance of Jesus’ final days on earth, his burial, and the resurrection. The emphasis at this Mass is the gift of the Eucharist, when believers celebrate the

Paradoxically, even though hundreds of millions of Catholics receive Holy Communion on a regular basis, if you ask them whether they have a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus, many of them will look puzzled.  It’s as if the words—“personal relationship”—carried some extraordinary miraculous activity or some astonishing emotional impact, an activity and impact that they just

Because we have been baptized and received the Holy Spirit, there is no doubt that every believer shares in the gifts of the Spirit.  Often believers are not fully conscious of these gifts.  Often Christians transform the gifts of the Spirit into self-serving ways of feeling better than others. The ministry of St. Paul has

Do you ever wonder what it means to be a disciple of Jesus? After all, is it one thing to be a believer and another thing to be a committed disciple? Lots of people see themselves as believers, but “disciple” entails a special awareness of our relationship to Jesus and a special strength in following