Author name: Molly Hostetler

Modern scholarship tends to date Mark’s Gospel around A.D. 70-75, Matthew around 75, Luke around 80-90, and John around 90-100.

Sacred Scripture frequently underscores the central role which daily prayer ought to occupy in the life of the Christian. First and foremost, the Gospels offer us the example of Our Lord.

We have all heard the expression “mind your own business.” Perhaps we ourselves have said it to an individual who is being overly curious about something in our lives, or asking something very personal. In these cases, it makes sense. But at other times it can be a kind of escape mechanism when someone sincerely wants to help us and we turn him or her away. It can be the rude answer of a person who doesn’t really want to think about his or her life in a serious way, or to change what needs to be changed.

Self-identified transgender persons are a small but apparently growing population of persons who experience a severe dissonance between their sex (male or female) and their interior sense of themselves as men or women. It is a condition that is associated with a high rate of self-harming behavior, including alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse, prostitution, and suicide. It is a condition that demands merciful care in every regard.

The spousal meaning of the body, John Paul II explains, is ordered to an end: the communion of one flesh. This communion is a matter of choice and freedom because it involves the reciprocal self-gift of persons.

Within our general vocation to be in the Church and share in Christ’s redemptive mission, God has a special plan for our life. Since God created us in His image and likeness, we each have a deep desire to love and be loved, just as the three Persons of the Holy Trinity share an infinite life of knowledge and love, which includes the gift of Themselves to one another.

When a man and a woman discern the vocation of marriage, they move from a private promise to each other—I am my beloved’s, and he is mine—to a public engagement.

Forty days after the Resurrection, the Apostles witnessed the entry of Jesus’ humanity into divine glory as he ascended into the heavens and disappeared into a cloud—a symbol of God’s presence and glory.

Our civilization is crumbling from within, and one of the reasons is no-fault divorce. Many celebrities seem to mock marriage, with multiple extravagant weddings, tabloid-reported affairs and public court battles for custody of children. Perhaps their struggle is greater than the average person’s, as they try to balance fame, demanding careers and their private lives. Nevertheless, what started in Hollywood forty years ago is the norm today in many communities.