We should make this Year of Faith a time of spiritual growth and renewal.

Our life of faith needs to be renewed all the time because it is a relationship.

Relationships are living things. And like all living things, our relationships will either keep growing and getting stronger or they will wither and fade.

Our friendship with Jesus Christ takes commitment and a lot of work — just like our human relationships with our friends, spouses, parents or children.

We need to always be making time to be with Jesus. We need to always be trying to know him better — his attitudes and…

The Synod of Bishops is over and I am happy to be home again!

These last three weeks have been a wonderful experience. It was a very busy time, filled with meetings and working sessions with my brother bishops. It was a time for friendship and fraternity. For me personally, it was also a fruitful time for prayer and reflection.

During the Synod, our Holy Father compared the faith in our country and throughout the West as a fire that is dying out. The “embers” of belief are slowly fading, he said. They are waiting to be stirred and enkindled until once more the faith becomes a…

I write to you again this week from Rome, where the Synod of Bishops for the new evangelization has become a “synod of saints.”

Pope Benedict XVI opened the Synod almost three weeks ago by adding St. Hildegard of Bingen and St. John of Avila to the elite list of Church “doctors” — saints are special teachers of holiness and of theology and spirituality.

This past Sunday, which was World Mission Sunday, I was blessed to concelebrate a Mass in which the Pope proclaimed seven new saints who have a special meaning for the Year of Faith and the new evangelization.

Among…

Vatican City.- The New Evangelization needs to reach out to young people using every means available, new and old, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles says.

“It is our mission to ask God for the grace to discover new means to reach out to young people,” Archbishop Gomez said. “We need to use all the new means of communication so that they can understand what we are talking about.”

The New Evangelization must present timeless truths in new ways, he told CNA on Oct. 18 during a break of the synod on the New Evangelization.

“Beautiful traditions, like the exposition of the…

I write you this week from Rome — one week into the month-long Synod of Bishops called by Pope Benedict XVI to consider the Church’s mission in these times of growing secularism and indifference to religion.

Our Holy Father has been a lively presence — attending most of the Synod sessions with us this week. Already we have had the grace of being able to concelebrate two beautiful Masses with him — one for the opening of the Synod and another to mark the opening of the Year of Faith.

In his homily opening the Synod, he told us: “The Church exists to evangelize.” God has…

My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,

1. The world needs a new evangelization! The people of our city, our nation and our continent are waiting for the encounter with Jesus Christ who makes all things new.

In every age, Jesus draws near to offer his salvation to all people. He calls: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock!”

Jesus invites men and women to follow him and seek the Kingdom of God. He calls them to live as God’s children in his family, the Catholic Church.

But in our time, it seems to be getting harder for people to hear the voice of Jesus and his…

America’s Catholics have been faithful citizens since before this country had a name.

The first missionaries set up schools and basic human services. They helped form local economies based on farming, handicrafts and light manufacturing.

A generation before the American Revolution, Ursuline sisters from France were running an orphanage, a hospital and a girls’ school in Louisiana — serving mostly non-Catholics.

Since those early days, individual Catholics and Church institutions have been engaged in social ministries serving the common good of our society — schools,…

These are the last days of an election season that has been tough and intense — at all levels of government. And as I said in my column last week, it is always a challenge for us to keep our loyalties in line.

Because, before all else, we are Catholics.

There is no area of our life that we can imagine is separated from God. We are always in God’s presence. And we are always accountable to him for our words, our actions and our intentions.

God does not look at us as members of a political party or as conservatives or liberals. What God asks is that we be faithful to Jesus…

The hardest thing to do in any election year is to keep our faith and politics straight.

There are always two basic temptations we face.

On the one hand, we’re tempted to separate our faith from our politics — to act as if there is no relation between what we believe or what our Church teaches and how we vote or the positions we take on issues.

The other temptation is the opposite — the temptation to “use” our religion to justify our political projects and prejudices.

Obviously, neither option conforms to what Jesus expects of us.

We all remember the Gospel story…

This weekend we remember and give thanks to God for Blessed Pope John Paul II’s pastoral ¬visit to Los Angeles on September 15–16, 1987.

This 25th anniversary calls us to reflect on what a special privilege it is to receive a visit from the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. We have to ask ourselves: What was the Spirit of God saying to our Church through the Holy Father’s words and pastoral gestures? What challenges and priorities did he identify for our mission? Have we allowed his words to influence our lives and ministries?

Those were the questions…