Deacon Doug Mould

Father Steve was a good friend of the family who would often come over to the house and visit when I was younger.  He presided the weddings for my wife Susan and me, and several of my siblings, and he baptized many of my parents’ grandchildren. He almost always came over on Sunday afternoons and […]

When my wife and I drive to Chicago to visit our son, his wife, and two of our grandchildren, there are three or four different routes that I can take to get there.  But I almost always choose the same route each time, because I’m familiar with it and I’m comfortable with it, even though

It’s the evening of the very first Easter, the day of Jesus’ Resurrection, and Jesus appears to the disciples, who are hiding in the upper room.  Jesus appeared to his disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” This greeting, “Peace be with you,” or “Shalom,” is both comforting and surprising.  It is comforting

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus is speaking about a tradition that was believed in the time of the Old Testament and was a common belief even in first century Judaism.  That is, that if some evil were to befall you (illness, an accident, sudden death), then it must be because of some sin of which

The Ark of the Covenant is something that should be familiar to all of us.  It was a chest, almost 4 feet long, 1 ½ feet in width and height that contained the two stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments of God were inscribed.  Its lid was a solid slab of gold, mounted with

We are coming the end of the Church’s Liturgical Year (Advent is only two weeks away), and we are hearing from scripture readings that might cause us to ask “This is the Good News?”  We are being told about the end of time, when Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. 

When we hear the opening line from the first reading from the Book of Isaiah it may sound rather harsh: “The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.”  This is the translation used in the Lectionary we use at Mass. Other translations use different words: “It was the will of the Lord to bruise

It’s almost universally accepted that if we want to grow and mature in a certain way, we need to be challenged.  In sports, if we never face an opponent who might be bigger, stronger, or faster than us, we might not be competitive.  In academics, if we don’t stretch our knowledge to learn, it will

For four weeks now we have been reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.  And for us as Catholics, is one of the most important chapters in all of the scriptures, because in this chapter is the foundation for our teaching and belief in the “True Presence” of the Eucharist – that

As you all know, Father Tom and I recently returned from a two-week pilgrimage in Europe, travelling to five cities in three different countries: Fatima, Portugal; Burgos, Spain; Lourdes, France; Barcelona, Spain; and Paris, France.  It was a Marian pilgrimage, where each place we visited had special places that were dedicated to our Blessed Mother.