Veni Creator Spiritus: A Church United in Prayer
Since it’s Wednesday, I was up early so I could get in a short run before celebrating daily Mass at St. Stan’s—which today would be the Holy...
Easter and the Legacy of Pope Francis
Running back downtown from Hamden along the bike path this morning, it felt as if I were breathing in the glory of this Easter day—fully aware, of...
Holy Saturday At the Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter
It is Holy Saturday. The tomb is sealed. There is silence, stillness, and waiting.
Embracing the Shock to the System
The alarm went off at 4 a.m. I knew it was coming, but still, it felt like a shock to the system. Rolling out of bed in the dark, layering up like it...
All the Small Things: Faith, Focus, and the Power of Little Choices
Back in the fall of 1999, my college cross-country team must have played Blink-182’s newly released album—almost in its entirety—at least a hundred...
Running Toward Mercy: Finding Clarity in Repentance
Sometimes, when I’m running solo up a long, gradual hill, my legs burning and my rhythmic breathing helping me to focus, I experience a distinct kind...
Ash Wednesday
Now that we are beginning to think about our Lenten season, I find myself deeply moved by Thomas Halik's "Touch the Wounds," a book that explores...
Walking in the Lord: Finding True Blessing in Trust and Gratitude
Jesus begins his Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17, 20-26) with a series of blessings and woes, declaring: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the...
Welcoming the Stranger: A Call We Cannot Ignore
This past weekend, we celebrated Word of God Sunday, which Pope Francis established in 2019 to strengthen our connection with sacred scripture and...
Run to the Mountain: Finding Strength in Surrender
This week I’m writing to you from the peaceful silence of Saint Joseph Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, where I am on retreat...
Between Mountains: Praying for Peace
This morning, I ran past the Albertus Magnus College track before descending Science Hill. As the streetlamps lit up the pre-dawn darkness and...
What a Squirrel Taught Me About Seeking Jesus
I was running to the top of Sleeping Giant in Hamden yesterday morning, thinking about the encounter between the rich young man and Jesus in the...
Running Towards Peace: Keeping Our Eyes on Christ
At daily Mass these last few days we have been listening to Luke’s Gospel account of Jesus’s ministry in Capernaum. Jesus's encounters with demons,...
Lacing Up on St. Augustine's Feast Day
As we lace up for the start of a new academic year, we do so on the feast day of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. One of the...
Remain in Him
On Tuesday night, while stationed at the entrance of the STM lecture hall for The Long Night Against Procrastination and overseeing a basket of...
A Pre-Dawn Change of Perspective
I was sitting in my car around 4:30 this morning, having woken up at 3:30 to pound a room temperature cup of coffee that I made the night before,...
We are Champions
On Wednesday morning, my run included a few loops around Old Campus. I was just a few strides into the fifth mile when a verse from Queen’s anthemic...
The Dynamic Nature Of Our Faith
As we look back on the Sacred Triduum and Easter celebrations, the profound beauty of what we experienced—the passion, death, and resurrection of...
The Feast of Saint John of the Cross
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent: It’s a big day. It’s Thursday of the Second Week of Advent. It’s the Feast of Saint John of the Cross, 16th...
Prepare the Way of the Lord
A few mornings ago, I was running along the trail at the base of East Rock with one of our students who was telling me about their experience...
Stay Awake and Be Ready!
“Stay awake and be ready! For you know neither the day nor the hour that your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42a, 44; 25:13).
Running on Faith: Shannon's Marathon Story
Late Thursday evening last week I received an email from Shannon, a member of the Yale College class of 2021. This is what she wrote:
Running on Faith: Worship & Doubt
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord. The moment when the disciples, who accompanied Jesus through his earthly ministry,...
Running on Faith: An Incredible Capacity for Work
The film Saint Ralph (2004) tells the story of a teenager who undergoes intense spiritual and physical training to become a saint and win the 1954...
Running on Faith: Immediately
It seems to always happen that the most sacred times in the Church year coincide with the busiest times in our lives. Just as during Advent, when we...
Running on Faith: Excited for What's Ahead
A lot of the buzz leading up to the 2023 Boston Marathon focused on Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, who broke his own world record in the Berlin Marathon in...
Running on Faith: To Have
In the spirit of this penitential season, I have a confession to make…that it’s been just over two years since, due to some issues with plantar...
Running on Faith: Learning from Esther
About a month ago, on one of the coldest and windiest days of the season, a student and I went for a long run. We are both preparing for spring...
Running on Faith: Running for Refugees
This past Sunday, as in the Gospel Jesus urged us all to strive for a higher order of righteousness, several members of the Saint Thomas More...
Running on Faith: An Extraordinary Ordinary Time
Since the end of the Christmas Season, which concluded with the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord on January 9th, and moving through these first...
Running on Faith: Five Steps to a Good Morning
A while back I wrote a Running on Faith reflection about a ritual and prayer routine I would do the night before a race – praying the Rosary and...
Running on Faith: Born All Over
In the Gospel we heard this past Monday, Jesus responds to those who objected to his disciples not fasting like those of John the Baptist and the...
Running on Faith: The First to Proclaim the Gospel
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor upon his lowly servant. In his...
Running on Faith: Opening Our Gates
Every year, at the start of the Advent season, which coincides with the busiest time in our lives, I am struck by the tension between trying to quiet...
Running on Faith: 2022 Boston Half Marathon
Last Sunday morning, several members of the Yale running community contended with cool temperatures and early rain in the 2022 Boston Half Marathon....
Running on Faith: All Saints Day Dash
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. Their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a...
Running on Faith: God Fully Alive
One morning recently, I was running along the trail in Westville’s Edgewood Park on my return from the Yale Track. It was the third in a string of...
Running on Faith: Paving the Way
This past weekend, female student athletes returned to campus to celebrate fifty years of women’s varsity athletics at Yale as part of a year-long...
Running on Faith: Our Circular Trails
Earlier this week I joined almost one-hundred-and-fifty of my brother priests for our annual convocation in Groton, Connecticut. Because our day...
Running on Faith: Re-Creation
A tendency that I began to notice, as early as my junior year in college, in my professional life, in seminary, and even now—although rarely, in...
Running on Faith: Season of Creation
While running loops and rows in the Grove Street Cemetery this morning, I was being serenaded by the voices of birds, crickets and other insects,...
Running on Faith: What Will I Do to Make This Place Beautiful?
On this gorgeous morning, over the course of a brief post-run stretch, I was having a nice chat with Angel. Angel is a member of our dedicated STM...
Running on Faith: Strides of Silence
At 7:45 on Labor Day morning, I opened the Chapel doors and was greeted by a handful of runners who were preparing to run in the Faxon Law New Haven...
Special Edition Running on Faith: When Nests Fall
It’s just forty-eight hours since we first learned of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas--the second largest school shooting in...
Running on Faith: Delighting in the Run
Whether it was a good race or a bad race, whether you hit a PR or you tank, or just barely make it by, there’s nothing like the beautiful, freeing...
Running on Faith: People in Motion
As we are now in the final stretch of the academic season, many of us are contending with the late nights, the lack of sleep, the caffeine overload,...
Running on Faith: Suffering and Finishing Well
On Sunday, Assistant Chaplain Grace Carroll ran the Providence Marathon through the capital city of her home state in Rhode Island. She finished...
Running on Faith: Running Towards Hope
On Tuesday morning, I celebrated the Mass of Christian Burial for Jack, a member of the STM community since he was just out of graduate school. He...
Running on Faith: Our Spiritual Postseason
We are now in the final days of Lent. A week from today we’ll be preparing for the Sacred Paschal Triduum, which begins with the Feast of the Lord’s...
Running on Faith: Pass It On
A running friend, who has actually written a few of our Advent and Lenten Scripture reflections, sent this image to me a couple weeks ago, saying: “I...
Running on Faith: Psalm 95
Each morning, just about one hour before I head out the door, I get out of bed, I pound a cup of lukewarm or cold coffee, I take up my breviary,...
Running on Faith: Croagh Patrick
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Patrick, the fifth-century Bishop who is most well-known for preaching the Gospel throughout Ireland and using...
Running on Faith: When God Draws Near
As some of you may recall, I wrote in an earlier Running on Faith about Esther, the heroic Queen, and her urgent, deeply personal prayer to God,...
Running on Faith: Lent's Long Run
At the start of our Ash Wednesday liturgy, we prayed that the Lord would “grant that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian...
Running on Faith: Praying for Peace
Throughout this morning’s run, all I had on my mind was the reality that as our world emerges from pandemic, suffering and sorrow in so many forms,...
Running on Faith: Finding the Overlap
On the February 4th episode of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert switched roles with his guest, Dua Lipa. The twenty-six-year-old singer, songwriter and...
Running on Faith: A One-Time Running Buddy
On a blazing hot and humid summer evening in Washington (D.C.) a few years ago, I was running alongside an elite runner, although I did not realize...
Running on Faith: An In-Between Time
In a recent article in the New York Times celebrating the twentieth anniversary of The Lord of the Rings film, Elijah Wood (who played Frodo Baggins)...
Running on Faith: God's Endurance Runners
“Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John, [saying]…This is the one about whom Scripture says: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,...
Running on Faith: A Relay for Our Lady of Guadalupe
Since today is the feast day for St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin and we are preparing to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe Day on Sunday, I found...
Running on Faith: Run Forth
“Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at...
Running on Faith: How Do You Commit to Your Faith?
After having run a consistently successful season, and led by three seniors Kayley Delay, Maddie Ghazarian and Zoe Nuechterlein, the Yale Women’s...
Running on Faith: What is your idea of Heaven?
While running along a steep, wooded trail a few mornings ago, I remembered that it was two years to the day that I was running along that same trail....
Running on Faith: The Little Things
Yesterday one of our students shared her experience of running her first marathon, the GFNY Marathon, which took place this past Sunday in Florida....
Running on Faith: Watching Where You're Going
Well, as they say, it’s “back to the drawing board.” After taking a few days off to recover from Boston, this week has me back up and running, now in...
Running on Faith: How Do You Tell a Story of Hope and Faith?
As much as I was looking forward to sharing with you the story of how I crushed the 2021 Boston Marathon this past Monday in this week’s “Running on...
Running on Faith: The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary
In this first week of the month dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, by which the Church commemorates...
Running on Faith: Guardian Angels
During the second half of a recent eight-mile tempo run, as I was urging myself to dig deeper and finish strong, an image popped into my mind of a...
Running on Faith: A Feeling of Close Presence
My priest support group, which was established over thirty years ago, with Fr. Bob Beloin as one of the founding members, just began reading The...
Running on Faith: Getting Out the Door
There are some mornings, more often than I’d like to admit, when the last thing I want to do is run. I’ll walk around my residence, check my email...
Running on Faith: The New Haven Road Race
For the first time in two years, on a characteristically sunny and humid Labor Day morning, the New Haven community gathered together for the first...
Running on Faith: Breathe
With the New Haven Half Marathon coming up on Labor Day and the 2021 Boston Marathon just around the corner, I incorporated a few 400-meter intervals...
Running on Faith: Staying in Step with the Spirit
The Baccalaureate Mass for the Class of 2021 fittingly fell on the day that the Church throughout the world celebrated Pentecost. The day that the...
Running on Faith: Building Up the Mileage
My running crew and I are gearing up to run the Pemigewasset (Pemi) Loop, a 30.3 mile trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. So, for the...
Running on Faith: Ascension Relay
On today’s Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord, the Catechism of the Catholic Church provides three statements. I think they are worth meditating...
Running on Faith: The Ivy League
Of the theories associated with how Yale, and seven other prestigious schools, were dubbed “Ivy League,” the one that seems to get the most traction...
Running on Faith: St. Catherine of Siena
Late spring, both in my senior year of high school and in my final year of college, were seasons when the most was demanded of my time, energy and...
Running on Faith: A Continued Call to Conversion
While I was running during this chilly morning on these quiet, silent New Haven streets, I kept thinking that I needed to say or write something...
Running on Faith: In God's Eyes
Recently, I was on a ten-mile morning run on the trails in Case Mountain Woods. As I was navigating the twists and turns, the rocks and obstacles,...
Running on Faith: Witnesses Run
In her blog, entitled: “The Hell of Holy Saturday,” which appeared in The Christian Century for Easter 2020, Shelly Rambo urged that “the miracle of...
Running on Faith: The Annunciation
On Friday mornings, I wake up at 3:30 to drive to Manchester to run with my handful of running mates for a 5AM start. We finish out the hour and then...
Running on Faith: Harden Not Our Hearts
When reading the Gospels, one thing that has always captivated me is the amount of time, energy, love and thoughtfulness that Jesus expends on his...
Running on Faith: Now Help Me, O Lord
“Now help me, who am alone and have no one but you, O LORD, my God.” Queen Esther, the heroine of today’s first reading from the Book of Esther,...
Running on Faith: Our Lady of Lourdes
On February 11, 1858, a few years after Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis...
Running on Faith: IRIS Run for Refugees 2021
One of the most impactful experiences I had while studying at Theological College & Catholic University in Washington, D.C., was working as an intern...
Running on Faith: What are Our Common Objects of Love?
When I was living in D.C., I used to love running down the Metro Red Line trail to Capitol Hill and the National Mall. Sometimes I would cut in to...
Running on Faith: The Light in the Darkness
In her New York Times op-ed, “Looking for Light on the Longest Night of the Year,” Margaret Renkl, writing at the beginning of the winter solstice on...
Running on Faith: Choosing Key Next Steps
I love running in the snow. There’s something serene and meditative about an early morning run on a snow day, when the streets are empty and the...
Running on Faith: These Days Renewed
“Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you...
Running on Faith: The Tunnel
For me, the most difficult part of the Boston Marathon is not the hours of anxious waiting in Hopkinton leading up to the start of the race, nor the...
Running on Faith: Happy Thanksgiving!
"To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything God has given us—and God has given us everything. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for...
Running on Faith: Derry Girls
So, I thought I would take a little breather from the necessarily serious tone “Running on Faith” has been taking over the past couple of weeks to...
Running on Faith: Saturday Reflections
When I went for a run a few hours after Joe Biden received the number of electoral votes to be named the 46th President of the United States, it felt...
Running on Faith: Be the Hope; Be the Healing
At the time that I’m writing this edition of “Running on Faith,” we are still awaiting the results of this historic and tenuous national election. We...
Running on Faith: Father Michael J. McGivney
On April 3, 2008, an article appeared in the Yale Daily News, entitled: “Sainthood’s Next Stop: New Haven?” The writer was Martine Powers and her...
Running on Faith: Christ's Love Running through Their Veins
Today the Church celebrates the optional memorial of Saint John Paul the Great. One of the great gifts that the sainted Pope gave to the Church was...
Running on Faith: "Where Does All That Talent Go?"
On the day after the death of Eddie Van Halen to cancer at the age of sixty-five, Howard Stern devoted a portion of his show to pay tribute to this...
Running on Faith: Running with Family
October is the prime time for running in New England, and, we’re right in the middle of what would normally be cross country and road racing season....
Running on Faith: Who Deserves to Run?
I have found, and often boasted, that I can run just about anywhere: any neighborhood, town or city—here, at home or abroad. My favorite way to see...
Running on Faith: Running for Equality
Starting to get back into stride after taking a few days off following the virtual marathon last week, I went for a chilly morning run around the...
Running on Faith: The 2020 Virtual Boston Marathon
This past weekend, I participated in the virtual running of the 2020 Boston Marathon. The in-person run from Hopkinton to Boylston Street, which...
Running on Faith: Running Towards the Open Door
This Monday, the New Haven Register ran an op-ed entitled: “Inclusive education: If not now, when?” In it, Elijah Manning examined the importance of...
Running on Faith: Run with Purpose
“Run with Purpose: 1 Corinthians 9:26.” That’s the sticker my niece picked out to fill one of the open spaces on my second Nalgene water bottle, the...
Reflection: Feast of the Ascension
On this Feast of the Ascension, I want to turn to the lesser-known theological work from 1994, Disney’s “The Lion King.”[1] You might be wondering...
Three Questions: Kristopher T. Kahle, M.D., Ph.D.
Three Questions is a recurring feature in STM Magazine. In the Fall issue, Cristina Otero '21, a pre-med student, asks Kristopher T. Kahle, M.D.,...
Eulogy: Mass of Christian Burial for Fr. Robert L. Beloin
He drew the distinction between the good life and abundant life.
Homily: Mass of Christian Burial for Fr. Robert L. Beloin
More than 30 years ago, a legendary priest named Father Eugene Walsh taught at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and at Theological College at...