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Today, we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception. We honor the grace given by Jesus to his mother at her conception to prepare her for her role in our salvation, making her into a fit dwelling place for himself.

1. Await in prayer. He who prays waits attentively. Prayer is at the core of our preparation to receive the Lord anew this Christmas. Constant prayer helps us become aware of God’s presence and keeps us from falling into old habits. Yet forgetfulness is frequently our biggest enemy. How often do we go about our […]

1. Assess your priorities. Advent is a time of preparation to welcome the Messiah anew into our hearts. But in order to welcome him and receive that peace and freedom that only he can give us, we must prepare our hearts for his coming. Come Christmas, will we receive him as the Lord of our […]

So then, men having thus become brutalized, and demoniacal deceit thus clouding every place, and hiding the knowledge of the true God, what was God to do? To keep still silence at so great a thing, and suffer men to be led astray by demons and not to know God?

On December 6th, we celebrate the feast of St. Nicholas, a.k.a. Santa Claus. As you may have expected, St. Nicolas’s story neither begins at the North Pole nor in Sombertown. Rather, it begins in the city of Myra, located in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Nicolas was born to wealthy parents in the fourth century. He suffered under the Diocletian persecution and was imprisoned. He was released after Constantine issued the Edict of Milan (313), which made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire. Nicholas was consecrated the bishop of Myra.

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki Paprocki is the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois (installed on June 22, 2010). Growing up in Chicago, he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1978.