I’m driving right now as I write this. Well, I’m in the car as a passenger. Father Lachlan is driving. We’re going upstate for an overnight respite with The Sisters of Life. Anyway, I thought this might be a fitting time to share (somewhat playfully) what I’ve learned about life from years of driving on the roads.

A bulletin column is hardly the place for an adequate consideration of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. I resolve nothing here. To suggest otherwise would be insulting to those who dedicate their lives to the question. That said, I do think the consideration of whether there are one world or many may serve to illuminate something about our human condition - something hard for us to see because it is the very thing that blinds us.

A few things are converging this week. All Saints’ Day, for one, with its ancient pagan precedent, Halloween. All Souls’ Day on Monday. We’ll also begin teaching the Our Father to the children this week. And the diocese re-sent a letter from Bishop Barres on “mediums” and the Catholic Faith. With all this in mind, I offer you an excerpt of the bishop’s pastoral letter. I strongly urge you to read it in its entirety, which is available on our parish website.

Saint Louis de Montfort teaches, in substance, that the devil fears the humility of the Blessed Virgin, for while God can crush his head by might, she, a mere creature, crushes him with lowliness, which is more humiliating. Humility overcomes evil, for it is of God.

I mean, it’s not like being Catholic is cool. Yet we hope that teenagers and young adults will stay with Christ and His Church (since the two are the same thing). It surely won’t be easy. For some it will mean sacrificing pleasures their peers call “natural.” Others will lose friends altogether because of Christ. So why would a young person even want to be a Christian?

I mentioned last Sunday my mother told me she and my father were “looking at the will” and that my sister and I would soon be filled in on the details etc. Since then I’ve been thinking about the word “inheritance” a lot. More specifically, how if the Kingdom of God is an inheritance that means the question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is silly, since there is nothing one can do to be included in an inheritance; it’s entirely up to the parent to will it.

On one occasion, the disciples of Jesus approached and asked Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ (Lk 11:1)

It’s the same question we ask Him ourselves, even now. We hear about it all the time, but what is prayer? Why should I pray? And how do I pray?

His mother named him Peter John, after each of his grandfathers, PJ for short. But whenever he would cry his mother would give him to her father, Mr. Fulton, to walk him. The townspeople called him “Fulton’s child” so often that the name stuck. He later took it to himself: Fulton J. Sheen.