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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Catholic Review
As I was leaving the hospital in May after treatment for my blood clots, another priest was returning to the hospital. I would have an extension of life. The life of Father Kevin Brooksbank would end at age 35.
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Catholic Review
In last week’s column I shared my ‘near-death’ experience from pulmonary embolisms – blood clots that broke off from a larger clot in my leg and traveled to my lungs. As I explained last week, a blood clot in the leg is known as DVT – Deep Vein Thrombosis. Two hundred thousand people die each year in the U.S. from blood clots – more than die of AIDS and breast cancer combined.
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Catholic Review
Because I write my columns a few weeks in advance, it’s impossible to stay current with all the events of life. However, from the evening of May 12 to the morning of May 21, I was a patient at St. Joseph’s Medical Center. A new blood clot had apparently formed in my right leg, and parts of the blood clot had broken off and moved to my lungs! Clots in the lungs are known as pulmonary embolisms, and they can be fatal.
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Catholic Review
Over the years, I have literally spent thousands of dollars on courses, classes and books in an effort to be of most help to couples in their marriages. So, naturally, one of the most helpful things I ever found was not in any of those courses, classes or books. It was something I found at a flea market! Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Catholic Review
In his commentary on the Scriptures for the fifth Sunday of Easter, Father Daniel Harrington, S.J., offers the following: “Philip’s request to Jesus (‘Show us the Father and that will be enough for us’) is the occasion for Jesus to express the central and most profound insight in all of John’s Gospel: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ John’s central message is that Jesus is both the revealer and the revelation of God. If we wish to know who God is, what God thinks and what God wants of us, we must attend to Jesus, the Word of God.”
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Catholic Review
From people outside of the Catholic Church, I often hear the question: “Why do you Catholics make so much of Mary?” The simplest answer I can ever give is: “We honor Mary because God honored Mary.”
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to The Review
Jesus said that “the meek will inherit the earth.” Years ago, a woman I knew cynically responded, “The meek will inherit the earth when the bold are finished with it!” Her cynical comment may indeed be closer to the ‘truth’ as the way the world operates. Arrogance, power and wealth do indeed seem to run the world.
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Special to the Review
Spring really is “bursting out all over.” The death of the winter to the new life of spring is indeed a wonderful time to celebrate the death of Christ and now his new risen life in this Easter Season.
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Catholic Review columnist
I’ve always been touched that the first words the risen Lord spoke to the Apostles in the upper room were: “Shalom! Peace!”
In my humanness my first words might have been something like: “Hey, where were you guys? Weren’t you the ones who said you would stay with me, even if it meant dying with me?”
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Fr. Joe Breighner
Catholic Review columnist
Holy Week and Easter, with their powerful story of death and resurrection, are especially poignant this year. In a period of just over a month, three priests of the Archdiocese of Baltimore have died: Father Chris Carney (whom I have already written about), Father Wayne Funk, pastor of St. John the Evangelist in Frederick, and Monsignor Jim Cronin, founding pastor of St. Isaac Jogues in Carney.
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