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…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– After Trappist monks traveled in 1947 from Kentucky to start a new abbey in rural Huntsville, Utah, the state already filled with Latter-day Saints eventually embraced…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Although I like to write too, I have only a few fleeting connections with the great American journalist and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain.…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– You cannot live in Utah without hearing a good fish story or two. My personal favorite involves an unconventional catch by an unconventional man. He was…