By Gary Topping– As faithful readers of The Boy Monk now know, Mike O’Brien and I have become the unplanned custodians of several hundred books from the now-defunct Abbey of…
Posts published in “Uncategorized”
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I must not get it. By “it” I mean the transitory nature of life and all its manifestations. I seem to grasp the concept, at least…
By Gary Topping– I’ve never been one, even as a kid, to stay up to celebrate the arrival of a new year. Instead, I’m usually long since in bed and…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– As one year passes and a new one starts, I wonder if it possible to get more Irish as you get older. Scientists would argue no,…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The fifty year old photo of my family’s old aluminum Christmas tree includes a surprise. A small and almost undetectable child in red and white striped…
By Gary Topping– The Third Sunday of Advent, which we have just passed, is known as Gaudete Sunday. “Gaudete” is a plural Latin imperative, which could properly be translated as…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien and Donald Raymond O’Brien– One of the miracles of family history research is the chance to spend the holidays with family members you never even met,…
By Gary Topping– Advent is primarily a season of anticipation and reflection, but it can also be a season of confession and penance as our reflection leads us to consider…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– “I once was lost, but now am found…” – John Newton, Amazing Grace In 1925, during a visit to her mother’s home town in Corning, Ohio,…
By Gary Topping– “Are you sure there isn’t some kind of indulgence available to those of us who actually get our Advent wreath up by the first Sunday of Advent”?…