Fr Tom Gardner

As we celebrate the great Solemnity of Christ the King, I have two very different Saints on my mind–St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Jose Sanchez del Rio. They couldn’t be more different in many ways. Their lives are separated by centuries–St. Elizabeth of Hungary was born in 1207 and St. Jose Sanchez del Rio […]

I invite you to turn back the clock and remember the early 90’s. It was a simpler time–no smartphones, no social media, even the internet wasn’t really a thing. These were the days of my early childhood. I was just getting ready to start Kindergarten. One of my most enduring memories from that time is

I want to tell you the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He grew up in Poland and eventually ended up becoming a Franciscan priest. When the Nazis invaded Poland, he was unafraid to help the Jewish people of his area and so, like many priests at the hands of the Nazis, he was arrested and

The parable about the wedding feast in the Gospel today took my mind back to a magical time in high school: prom night. Specifically, I was remembering my first prom experience as a junior in high school. At that point, I hadn’t dated extensively and definitely had never taken a girl out for a nice

Today I want to tell you the tale of two nights. The first night was spent in the rectory at one of my summer assignments as a seminarian. Leading up to that night, I had been watching the show “The Walking Dead” through Netflix. At that time, the main way to watch Netflix was by

A few years ago, my Mom and I had the great privilege of seeing my sister Laura take her students to State Orchestra Contest. I will never forget the pride I felt watching Laura up there so poised as she directed her students. They did a phenomenal job and we cheered loudly along with many

Let me tell you a story about Alessandro Serenelli. Alessandro grew up in a poor family in Italy. By the time he was a young man, his mother and one of his brothers had already died in mental asylums. His father, an alcoholic, was hard-pressed to provide for his family working as a sharecropper. Alessandro’s

I want to tell you the stories of two different actors, one you’ve probably heard of and one you probably haven’t heard of. If you were alive and watching movies in the 80’s and 90’s, you’ve probably heard of Rick Moranis. He starred in such popular movies as “Ghostbusters,” “Spaceballs,” and “Honey, I Shrunk the

Some movies have certain scenes that are iconic without even needing any dialogue. There is the T Rex foot slamming down into the mud in “Jurassic Park,” Rocky training for his fight on the steps of the Philadelphia museum of art, Charlton Heston as Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea, and so many

The past week and a half I was blessed to be the chaplain on a men’s retreat called Wilderness Outreach in the mountains of northern California. It was a great week of prayer, good brotherly discussions about faith, and daily Mass at an altar we created out in the woods. Our last night in the