Fr Tom Gardner

The image of the vine that Jesus uses in the Gospel for this weekend sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. There are so many videos on the internet about grafting. I learned the term ‘scion’ from these videos. It might be a familiar term to anyone who does a lot of gardening, […]

My mind is on the beautiful, fictional land of Narnia once again. You may remember me talking before about C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia book series in previous homilies. Right now I am reading book one in the series with the 6th and 7th graders at the school, so it’s not too surprising that a

When I was 19, I spent my first real summer away from home. I decided to do a summer household program in Minnesota with Saint Paul’s Outreach, the Catholic group I was involved in during college. That summer I lived with a number of other young Catholic men in a house near the University of

Today is a great day, a day of joy, a day of victory, a day of gladness, because Jesus is risen! Alleluia. As I prayed about the Easter glory that we celebrate today and throughout the Easter season, once again the Lord impressed upon my heart the truth that all of history, going back to

What a privilege we have tonight in joining Christians all over the world to herald the triumph of Jesus’ Divine Love over sin and death. As we heard Dcn. Doug sing in the Exultet at the beginning of this beautiful Mass: This is the nightthat even now, throughout the world,sets Christian believers apart from worldly

What can we say today except, thank you Jesus! Thank You for Your conquering love. Thank You for pouring out Your blood for our forgiveness. Thank you for winning us the victory over death, sin and hell! There is a moment in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, that always strikes me. It is

Years ago, my brother, Billy, and I went to a punk rock concert together with some of my friends at the Newport Music Hall near OSU campus. One of the other people in the group was a bubbly blonde girl named Maura. Although Maura and Billy had met briefly before, he didn’t remember it. But

Recently I talked with my Mom and Dad about their wedding in 1977. They both remember it like it was yesterday. You might think my Dad spent the morning getting dressed and waiting for the wedding to start, but there was more to it than that. The reception was to take place in the cafeteria

There are certain movies I could watch over and over for the rest of my life and not get sick of them. One of those is “Field of Dreams.” This movie captures the spiritual path of a man trying to follow a power greater than himself who ends up doing some seemingly crazy things, above

There’s a moment from the movie, The Passion of the Christ, which came to me as I prayed with this weekend’s readings. It is the decisive moment for Simon of Cyrene. As we know from praying the Stations of the Cross and reading the accounts of Jesus’ Passion, Simon was the man the Romans pulled