Fr Tom Gardner

Do you have boxes full of old letters and notes from people you love? I think most of us have at least a few of these in our closets. In my saved letters, there are a healthy number of notes from my friend Dudley. I met Dudley when I was a young seminarian. As part […]

“Have no anxiety at all,” Saint Paul says. The first time I read this, I thought to myself, “Is he serious? Is that even possible? Have no anxiety at all?” I can understand not to get anxious about certain things: “Don’t sweat the small stuff” as the saying goes. But to have no anxiety at

Isn’t it great in movies when the heroes receive the help they need at just the perfect moment? There are several movies that come to mind with those types of moments. One is The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In this movie, all seems to be lost, as Aragorn, the soon-to-be leader of

All around us, we are now hearing Christmas music, seeing Christmas displays go up and being told that the Christmas season is here. But for us as Catholics, that is not really the case. We are now in the season of Advent, the season where we prepare for the coming of Christ. Advent reminds us

“What is truth?” These are the words of Pilate that follow Jesus’ statement that is the last line of our Gospel passage: “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth hears my voice.” It’s hard to determine the tone

I want to tell you a bit about a great family that I am privileged to call friends. I won’t use their last name because I want to respect their privacy. The parents of this family, Mary Beth and Ryan are focused on living as intentional disciples of Jesus. For them, this means giving all

I have birthdays on my mind. As some of you know, I recently celebrated my 35th birthday. Back when I was a kid, one of the special parts of birthday celebrations was the birthday sign. My mom made the sign by hand for years and then she upgraded to making them using the greeting card

There’s a little prayer that we can use for almost any occasion, or even for no occasion, called “The Jesus Prayer.” It’s easy to remember, it’s short, and it tells the truth. It goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” According to numerous Church Fathers, the Jesus Prayer is

When I was in college, I lived in a Catholic fraternity-style house with about ten other guys and we had a great time together. Some of my favorite memories from those days are of being in the kitchen with my household brothers cleaning up after meals. Even though we had a working dishwasher, we would

This weekend my mind is on the movie Ice Age as we ponder the readings together. The beginning of all the Ice Age series of movies has always cracked me up. If you haven’t seen them, they all start with a funny scene starring a character called Scrat. Scrat is a little, prehistoric squirrel-like animal