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Article 129 - Catechism of the Catholic Church Series Paragraphs 1691-1698 As a small child, do you remember learning to pray to your guardian angel? Perhaps you remember your mother teaching you that your guardian angel helped keep you from hurting your soul by sin. Perhaps you remember her telling you that your guardian angel helped steer you away from sin. Perhaps you remember her telling you that your guardian angel helped you understand what God wants. Perhaps you remember the little prayer to your guardian angel ...

On this feast, it is good for us to visualize the real humanity of the only woman conceived without sin. If we look, for example, at the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary, we will find five portraits of a woman in whose image any action hero pales.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, This will be a Thanksgiving Day I won't soon forget. On Thanksgiving morning, the bishops of Pennsylvania and New Jersey will be meeting with Pope Francis. Certainly, being your bishop is one of the things I am most grateful for, so it will be an appropriate way to spend Thanksgiving Day and I can thank the person who sent me here to you, Pope Francis.

Article 128 - Catechism of the Catholic Church Series Paragraphs 1680-1690 The most beautiful legacy my father left to his family is that he taught us how to live and he taught us how to die. During his lifetime, the words my dad spoke to us, and the example he set, were a perpetual lesson in how to live virtuously. Throughout his life, though deaf from the age of 21 and blind in the years before the end of his life, having battled years of sickness due to tuberculosis and many major surgeries that included the removal of a kidney and lung coupled with cancer and heart disease, my dad never thought of himself as disabled or needy, or otherwise less blessed by God.

As the leaves change color and the air turns crisp, we look forward to the Thanksgiving Holiday, a day of feasting, football and family and a time for us to give thanks for the many blessings we share. Sadly, more than 40 million Americans live in poverty and are not able to afford basic necessities, including housing, utilities, food, clothing and healthcare, let alone Thanksgiving dinner. Last year, in the United States, one of the world’s richest countries, one in every six children lived in poverty and the poverty rate among seniors was near 10 percent.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, As we enter this final month of preparation in our year of awakening before consecrating our diocese to Jesus through Our Lady of Guadalupe, I want to share with you my opening homily from our pilgrimage to her shrine in Mexico City. I think it applies to all of us and can help us all prepare for the graces Mary wants to share with us:

As we approach the conclusion of the liturgical year, our readings place increasing emphasis on the end of our earthly lives and the end of time. Both our first reading and Gospel this Sunday, in fact, speak of our chief hope -- that we may continue to live eternally with Christ Jesus in heaven. We take heart in Jesus’ promise that God “is not God of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:38).