When I was 22, I went on a pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee Year of 2000. I was traveling light with just a backpack, one blue shirt and black pants, little money, and no Italian. I had a few close friends and one goal: to reach the Eternal City. Despite the challenges and deprivations, I felt alive in a way I had never known before.

Despite the snow, love still found its way to our annual Open House Christmas celebration. About two hundred parishioners, friends, and families braved the weather and filled the space with warmth, laughter, and the true spirit of Christmas. It was a beautiful reminder that community is stronger than the storm.

I am deeply thankful to everyone who came and shared in this moment of joy. And a special word of gratitude to my dear friend Joyce— whom I called at the last minute—who stepped in with grace, vision, and generosity. She assembled an incredible team and helped create an evening that truly felt magical.

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Each year at Christmas, we return to a truth so profound that even the heavens bent low to behold it: God became one of us. In the Vigil Gospel for Christmas, Matthew reminds us that the Child born of the Virgin shall be called Emmanuel—a name that means “God is with us.” Not above us, not distant from us, not watching from the sidelines of history, but with us—choosing to walk the very roads we walk.

When I was 11, I was riding my bike on a Friday night in Scottsdale, Arizona. I saw giant spotlights swirling in the sky. Something amazing had to be happening. I pedaled after them with excitement. Sweaty and tired, I arrived, only to find a used car lot. Bright lights, flapping banners, inflatable balloon men swaying wildly in the wind. I stood there, heart sinking. All that spectacle, and all my effort … for this?

This week we hear that John the Baptist is out in the wilderness eating “locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6). It’s not just a strange historical detail. It’s a symbolic expression of a healthy spiritual diet. The path to Christ includes both the hard and the beautiful, the gritty and the sweet. We have to learn to gulp the locusts and savor the honey.

A few years ago, my house was broken into on Super Bowl Sunday. Turns out, it’s a great day for burglars. If the TV isn’t on, people are probably watching the game somewhere else, so … easy pickins’. I’ll never forget walking into my bedroom and realizing someone had been there.

Not long ago, I was called to a hospital to anoint a woman in her early 80s. She was dying, and visibly in pain. But what struck me most wasn’t her suffering — it was the atmosphere in the room. She had eight children and 30 foster kids, and many of them were gathered around her. You’d expect sorrow, fear, maybe even despair.

When I was a kid growing up in New England, I’d occasionally go on a whale watch. Once we went out with calm waters and clear skies. But on the way back in, the sea got rough. I was just a kid, and I remember thinking we should turn left or right toward the shoreline I could see. But the pilot of the boat kept going straight — right into the waves — focused on a small, discouragingly distant lighthouse. Even when it flickered in and out of sight, he stayed the course. He knew where he was going.

When I was 22, I entered St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time. It floored me. I could hardly take it in, its grandeur, majestic arches, vibrant colors, and the light that danced through its high windows. Somehow, amidst such splendor, I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging, as if I had finally come home.

My grave is in the corner of a cemetery in rural southeastern Wisconsin. For at least a mile in every direction, all you can see is farmland — cows, barns and quiet country roads. It’s beautiful, serene. I imagine the hand of God writing me into existence — she lived, she died — using for ink the very dirt that fills this grave. The dust from which I was created.