Fr. Gabriel Gillen, OP

Something beautiful will happen in Buenos Aires tonight. At around 6 p.m. a group of people will begin to congregate at the convent of St. Dominic in San Telmo, one of the city’s older barrios. There they’ll begin to prepare food in the kitchen. Really, the kitchen is more of a walk-in closet with an Read more…

By God’s grace, you made it to heaven, and now you’re at the Awards Ceremony of the Heavenly Banquet. St. Peter’s the emcee of the event. He’s been calling out the names of the elect and handing out awards for what feels like the last forty days and forty nights. There have been prizes for Read more…

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Rise up, O Lord, and save your people whom you have redeemed at the price of your own blood. Good Shepherd, save your sheep who are ravaged by wolves. Raise up shepherds after your own heart. Merciful Jesus, protect the little ones, heal the wounded, and Read more…

How do we pray amid Church scandals? One helpful way is to return to the basics: The Our Father. For this meditation, I’ll look to the various parts of the prayer in reverse order. Deliver us from evil — Father, you alone are holy. You alone are pure. The evil within your Church overwhelms me. Read more…

“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46). Such was the initial reaction to Jesus of the man we remember today, the man who, tradition tells us, would eventually surrender his very skin in testimony to Christ. Saint Bartholomew, also called Nathaniel, was skeptical not because of an unfair prejudice against people from Nazareth.  Instead, Read more…

I recently baptized a two month old. He slept through the whole ceremony, barely stirring as I poured water over his head three times (admittedly, it was warm water). On a natural level, this may be rather unremarkable. Babies sleep, at least when they want to. I’ve witnessed one sleep through a whole Memorial Day Read more…

Sooner or later, my body will become a corpse. A corpse looks alien. It’s both strangely familiar (so clearly my body), yet utterly unrecognizable (so clearly not me), putting on display the jarring indignity of death, the separation of my soul from my body—the fundamental elements that constitute me as a human person. Death dissolves Read more…

Feeding children what is good for them is sometimes difficult. The healthy foods that will nourish them and support their growth often seem unattractive or foreign. It may take some time for the kids to learn to enjoy true nourishment. So, parents sometimes need to ask children to trust, obey, and eat what they are Read more…

Saint Teresa of Calcutta famously said to her Missionaries of Charity, “God does not call us to be successful but to be faithful.” Really, these words provide a panacea for anyone tempted toward perfectionism as well as a stimulus for those who habitually throw up their arms in defeat. Following Jesus and answering the call Read more…

God writes the best adventures. From Abraham to the Apostles, God draws unsuspecting men out of their routines and sets them on unexpected journeys. Moses was tending his father-in-law’s flock, but after meeting a burning bush, he eventually found himself leading a whole nation out of slavery. Peter was fishing in a remote corner of Read more…

I recently met a young person who told me, “You’re the first person I’ve met who is my age and actually believes in God.” With the growing number of “nones”—those who identify as having no religious beliefs—many Christians worry that faith is becoming an antiquity, an heirloom of a fading age. There’s a spirit of Read more…

I love the collect the Church prays on today’s feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It voices a simple and robust request for God to act in our lives through the Blessed Virgin Mary: May the venerable intercession of the glorious Virgin Mary come to our aid, we pray, O Lord, so that, fortified Read more…