Often, I am asked whether I believe in evolution or whether evolution is a fact. These are complicated questions, but most who ask them expect a clear and simple answer. So I have learned to simply say "yes, evolution is a fact."

However, I quite disagree with those who think that evolution is the answer to all there is to ask about life. Evolution is a theory of something, but not everything.

At the birth of my first child, I experienced in a personal way the fulfillment of God's promises. I remember how close I felt to the Lord during my pregnancy, despite the physical difficulties of childbearing.

Very early on Christmas morning, I travelled to hospital and laboured through the dark hours to deliver my daughter. In the gift of Hannah's birth, I came to a deeper understanding of the events of the Nativity, when God's promise of salvation is fulfilled in one tiny, human baby.

In the Foreword to the new volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger says he wants to lead his readers to both a personal encounter with Jesus and to "sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus." The two goals are compatible, a fact that Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) has long striven to articulate and defend. It is possible to both know and love Jesus.

FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

We are saved by the death of Jesus. All Christians believe this. This is a central tenet within the Christian faith and the centre of almost all Christian iconography. Jesus' death on a cross changed history forever. Indeed, we measure time by it. The effect of his death so marked the world that, not long after he died, the world began to measure time by him. We are in the year 2011 since Jesus was born.

JOHN CONNELLY

In this week's Gospel, Jesus says of himself, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work."

Jesus came to do the will of his Father. This was the spiritual food that he ate. His entire life was dedicated to this purpose.

MARK PICKUP

Do old men have dreams?" asked Jeanette as she watched her 88-year-old father through the window of the cottage they rented for a week in the Rockies.

Bill Richards was standing alone on the deck looking at the natural majesty around him. It was dusk. The last vestiges of daylight were slipping behind a snow-capped mountain in the distance. It was the end of another day of more than 32,000 previous days that had passed in Bill's long life. There was something sad yet symbolic in the scene.

SR. LOUISE ZDUNICH, NDC

Lent is a time for prayer, fasting and almsgiving. I can understand fasting and almsgiving. But how can I pray?

BOB MCKEON

Last month, the Nothing More Beautiful presenters at the basilica spoke a powerful social justice message. One quote from Lesley-Anne Knight, the secretary-general of Caritas Internationalis, struck a special chord with me.

She said: "I am sometimes asked why, as a Catholic organization, we (Caritas) deliver aid to people of other faiths, Muslims and Buddhists. My answer is always that we help people not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholics."

Thirty years ago, Stephen Spielberg directed the blockbuster adventure movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The plot followed the search for the Jewish Ark of the Covenant, the golden chest housing the stone tablets on which God wrote his Ten Commandments. The movie followed the fictitious conflict between American Army Intelligence and the Nazis in their efforts to own the Ark.

EDMONTON — Just over two years ago, Brian (who didn't want his last name to be used) got his own home through the city's Rapid Exit Program. But the formerly homeless man said he would have to return to living in the river valley if it wasn't for the support of his church.

Brian, 60, maintains that giving a homeless person a home is not enough. "When I got housed in my home, I didn't know how to go into the community. I didn't know how to talk to people. I didn't know how to make friends. I didn't know how to be a neighbour."