A new springtime? →

In a radio broadcast in 1969, Father Joseph Ratzinger famously declared that “from the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.”

The future Cardinal Ratzinger obviously did not have the COVID-19 pandemic in mind when he wrote these words. In fact, he was discussing what he thought the Catholic Church would look like in the year 2000 — 31 years later, and five years before he would take the name Pope Benedict XVI.

Yet here in 2020, his words seem prophetic, in the original sense of the term.

Christ is risen! →

I rarely disagreed with the Catholic historian John Lukacs, my mentor and friend for a quarter of a century until his death during the Easter season a year ago. One thing we never saw eye to eye on, though, was the celebration of Easter in the Eastern Church. John preferred the reverence and beauty of the Easter liturgies of the West, which I love as well. But at Easter celebrations in Byzantine churches, I have also quite happily been swept away in what John called the orgiastic shouts of “Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!”

‘Be still and know that I am God’ →

I have visited St. Peter’s Square at night, when it has been nearly empty. So the sight of the square during the Holy Father’s extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing today did not shake my soul.

The sight of St. Peter’s Basilica, empty except for the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, did.

She said ‘yes’ →

At noon Rome time, 7 a.m. here in Huntington, Indiana, Catholics around the world joined Pope Francis in praying the Our Father for an end to the current pandemic. On this solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, those words that we too often recite by rote took on a special meaning: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

The imitation of Christ →

Catholics are used to hearing that we have a priest shortage in the United States. Yet if we have learned one thing in the past few weeks, it’s that we should consider ourselves lucky. As the coronavirus pandemic has made its way to our shores and the public celebration of Masses has been canceled across the country, the vast majority of American Catholics are finally getting a taste of what it’s like to be a Catholic in the sparsely populated regions of the United States, much less in the Amazon.

When is the next time that any of us will receive the Eucharist? Only God knows.