By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The Chinese zodiac assigns an animal and its unique characteristics to each year of a rotating 12-year cycle. If I had such calendar naming rights, I’d…
Posts published in December 2021
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Whether you celebrate it as a Christian holiday or not, I think the true meaning of Christmas is that some 2,000 years ago, a force for…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– (Editor’s note: this is an excerpt from Monastery Mornings, published in 2021 by Paraclete Press.) Once when I was a boy, my family and I found…
By Gary Topping– At this writing, we are well into the holiday season, with Thanksgiving behind us, Christmas on the horizon, and lots of holiday get-togethers in between. So with…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Most people knew him as Father Alan. Originally, however, he was Francis Joseph Hohl, born in Chicago in 1926 and raised in Rib Lake, Wisconsin, a…
By Deacon Mark Solak (Guest Contributor)– Homily, 1st Sunday of Advent, Cycle C November 28, 2021 This Sunday marks the beginning of the Season of Advent, and a new liturgical…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– An unexpected fringe benefit of my Utah-mini-tour promoting my new Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) book has been talking with people about their interfaith encounters. One…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– For many decades, a lovely set of painted tiles displayed the image of Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, on an outside wall at my beloved Trappist…