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The purest of Virgins gave us our God, who was this day born of her, clothed in the flesh of a Babe, and she was found worthy to feed him at her Breast: let us all adore Christ, who came to save us.Ye faithful people, let us all rejoice, for our Savior is born in our world: this Day there has been born the Son of the great Mother, and she yet a pure Virgin. O Queen of the world, and Daughter of a kingly race! Christ has risen from thy womb, as a Bridegroom coming from the bride-chamber:...

January 7, 2010                                Second Thursday of Christmas        Reading 1Responsorial PsalmReading 2Gospel Reading I1 Jn 4:19–5:4Beloved, we love God becausehe first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,”but hates his brother, he is a liar;for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him:Whoever loves God must also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,and everyone who loves the Fatherloves also the one begotten...

President Obama came back to work this week after leaving the Presidency for his Hawaiian holiday vacation. Hawaii proved to be a restful retreat for the President, his team and the White House press corps who all took time off from their regular duties to enjoy the Hawaiian sun and ignore their responsibilities. But after 10 days of tropical silence, this week there is a sudden flurry of security reviews, media statements, ass-covering and more misstatements coming out of Washington from the Obama Administration. But we still don’t know why the State Department didn’t revoke the visa of a man...

A conservative activist and Illinois comptroller candidate was escorted from the Illinois State Capitol building Wednesday when he tried to remove a sign put up by an atheist group. William J. Kelly announced Tuesday that he planned to take down the sign put up by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and on Wednesday, he tried to make good on his plan. But Kelly said when he turned the sign around so it was face down, state Capitol police were quick to escort him away.

Mim Bizic with some of the Serbian Christmas items: psenica, kolach and the bread baked with a lucky coin. Photo by Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette Perched in a sunny spot on Mim Bizic's kitchen counter is a glass bowl that, at first glance, appears to be green grass growing from a bed of pebbles. But the pebbles are grains of wheat that have broken open to release the shoots of new life -- a biblical metaphor for Jesus' death and resurrection taken from the Gospel of John. This tiny garden of wheat is a psenica (SHEN-it-za), a Christmas tradition in the Serbian...