By Deacon John Degano

 Fires burning in the fireplace. Hot chocolate on the stove… And snowflakes gently falling as we hurried to our rental car from our late afternoon conference session on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana.

 As a native Southern Californian, my wife, Cheryl, isn’t used to “weather.” You know, the thing that causes the leaves to change color, or groundhogs to hibernate…

By Deacon John Degano

 I got a phone call today from a woman asking what the difference was between two different Marian days being celebrated in the church some three days apart. I explained, “one was her nativity, the second was her most holy name.”

By Deacon John Degano

 We are collectors of stuff, aren’t we?

 We buy things on sale when we don’t really need them. We find things and bring them home thinking that someday we’ll put them to good use only to discover years later that we still haven’t moved them from that temporary storage place where we put them for safe keeping.

By Deacon John Degano

 Sitting at a packed Riverside City Council meeting last month, I couldn’t get over the similarity of the dialogue spewing from certain overtly vocal members in the audience to the Passion Sunday/Good Friday readings about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the sneering crowds shouting for his execution.

 “Seems like a good day for a crucifixion,” I thought.