To come home to ourselves, we need silence. We need to pray in secret. We need to be open, welcoming to God who wants to dwell in us. We need to trust that he knows us best, loves us most and gives us what we need.

I’d like to offer another view of Lent: it is a time to ensure that our spiritual life is in top-notch coordination.

The family of the Church responded to them by striving to carry out the mission that Jesus entrusted to us.

Pope Francis wrote about encountering Christ and the joy of evangelizing, a church that goes forth, not hiding or shrinking from challenges, but embracing them in openness and love to all.

When we are worried about something specific, we do well to take it to prayer, to ask the Lord to help us discern the path forward, to show us with whom we should be working, and then we roll up our sleeves and address it.

World Youth Day was more than an antidote to the isolation and anger that are so much a part of today’s culture. It was an event, a moment in history, when Christ’s presence in the power of the Holy Spirit was experienced, an experience that happened precisely by coming together, by journeying together in trust and friendship.

A great act of charity is to accompany a person or family who is thinking of coming back to church.

During the month of May, let us ask Mary, the Mother of the Church, to renew us in our belief and devotion to the mystery of the Eucharist.

The redemptive act of Christ, done in obedience to the Father’s saving will, embraced the full range our triumphs, tragedies and sins.

Violence against the unborn and violence against the chronically and terminally ill are indeed manifestations of the culture of death – the cheapening of human life.