Jeanie Hannaman

By Regis Martin, EWTN News - As Leo Tolstoy, fabled author of War and Peace, lay dying, he reportedly turned to his wife, and in a voice fraught with desperation, cried out, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” Replying to her husband, who was far from being a fabled figure to her, she answered commandingly, “Leo, you’re supposed to die. And I wish you’d get on with it!”... Unlike poor Leo, who appears to have been most fearfully ill-prepared, the rest of us should probably have a plan in place for contingencies like death.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - The first reading in today’s Mass (1 Kings 17:10-16) speaks to us of the paradox of poverty: it is our poverty, our neediness, that provides a doorway for God to bless us with true riches. Our emptiness provides room for God to go to work... In our worldly riches, we feel we have “too much to lose”; the Gospel just seems too demanding. In our poverty, emptiness, and detachment from this world, however, there is a strange and unexpected freedom that makes it easier to step out in faith—and stepping out in faith is the only thing that can save us.