Posts by Tom Hoopes

Blessed are the countercultural, who choose what’s best over what’s favored.

The Beatitudes are the grand summing up of Jesus’ message. Jesus goes up a mountain like a new Moses, and transforms the covenant with the Israelites. He broadens this promise to all

You don’t get awards for doing the dishes, and Jesus doesn’t give any awards for faith, either. But what he does give will blow you away.

She embraced them as a Protestant then sought them out as a Catholic: St. Michael the protector, St. Gabriel the patron of childbirth and St. Raphael the healer.

President Katalin Novák said that meeting Benedictine students “is the highlight of my visit to the United States … because you are the future.”

Here are the lessons I learned when she wrote me a letter, when I chronicled her country, when she visited my workplace, and when I volunteered at her house.

This week, The Extraordinary Story gets real. Tom Hoopes discusses the crisis of confession, and the dropping of many sacraments during the pandemic. He draws a parallel between our present moment in

Certainly not, says Jesus — especially when that rich person is us. The real hope for the world comes from the saints who unambiguously warn us that we are courting destruction.

God speaks indirectly to us, constantly. Sometimes, though, his voice is so unmistakable and direct that it compels us to take a new direction. It did for me when I was 16 …

Jesus of Nazareth explodes onto the scene like an action hero, circumventing the assumptions of his day and capturing the imagination of the crowds. Jesus began his project of changing the world