The unity between the Holy Spirt and Mary is so intimate that each one can be called the Immaculate Conception—one in eternity, and one in time. However, to understand the importance of Mary in our lives, we have to understand the basics of the Holy Spirit, as given to us by the earliest Christians. This post will be like a tornado hitting a junk pile and then organizing it into nice categories, so bear with the heavy theology at the beginning. Every earthly analogy to explain the Blessed Trinity eventually breaks down, but the least-failing analogy is the following: The Trinity is like a fire. There is a flame.  There is a light.  [...]

I suppose I wasn’t clear with my friends or family exactly what I’m doing in India this time either. The Missionaries of Charity at the Mother House in Kolkata wanted me to come back to do general confessions and deliverance prayers for two groups: 1) A youth group of Indian high school students run by four lay American missionaries. 2) University aged students of volunteers from around the world. It sounds like a glorious work, but I only have the energy for two of these sessions a day. This depresses me when I think of how St. Francis Xavier, at the height of his ministry, was baptizing between 300 and [...]