Posted by Carol Johnson on 12/18/24
The late Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos was a prominent bishop in Latin America. Pope St. John Paul II appointed him to a very important position at the Vatican. As it often happens, there was speculation about who would be the next pope. In the early 2000s, Cardinal Castrillon ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 12/10/24
The book of Judges tells us about Gideon. It was in the decades after the entry into the Promised Land and before the time of the kings. Nomadic peoples came and stole Israel's crops and livestock. God chose Gideon to confront Midian, one of these exploitative peoples.
Gideon was ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 12/10/24
People ask us priests how we knew we had a vocation to the priesthood. Giving a straight answer is difficult. It is not like one day we heard a voice from heaven giving us the assurance of our vocation. It is more like the Word of God subtly entering ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 11/25/24
We are used to seeing the letters INRI on crucifixes, an acronym for the words “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews” in Latin. When a friend of mine from High School would see a crucifix with the acronym on top, he would jokingly say that the crucifix, “It ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 11/17/24
At the end of a recent Concert at the Cathedral as part of the Centennial celebration of the Diocese of Raleigh, attendees were told that upon exiting the building we were to look at the sky and wait for a surprise. I wondered whether there would be fireworks illuminating ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 11/10/24
I see this family every Sunday at Mass. The girl in the family, over seven years old and with intellectual and developmental disabilities, is the person who insists on putting the family’s offering envelope in the collection basket each week. And woe to the parents if they do not ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 11/03/24
I had not been back to Rome in 23 years. This past January when I returned, after visiting St. Peter's Basilica, the Pantheon was my second stop. I had forgotten how big the hole also called the oculus or eye in the center of the Pantheon dome was. It ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 10/20/24
In today's Gospel reading, St. Mark tells us about the time when two apostles, James and John, made an important request to the Lord. They asked the Lord, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left” (Mark 10:37). St. ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 10/16/24
Perhaps the amount of money this seven-year-old boy saw in the collection basket of the church in my hometown was the largest amount of money he had ever seen. This boy thought that all that money was for the priest of the church. He was once asked what he ... Read More »
Posted by Carol Johnson on 10/07/24
The Bizarro world is a fictional planet that arrived on the scene of comic books in the 1960s. In the Bizarro world everything was the opposite of our planet. When I reflect on today’s Gospel reading, I think of this Bizarro world. Because of original sin, humanity lived in ... Read More »