If you have yet to visit the Vatican Museums in Rome, make sure that you don’t skip the “Stanze di Raffaello” also known as the Raphael Rooms on your way to the Sistine Chapel. Among the many frescoes done by the great Renaissance Master, Raphael, perhaps his most famous is The School of Athens, representing reason or philosophy. On the opposite wall is another fresco . . .

I have to admit: I love the summer break! Everything slows down a bit. Everything is less hectic; including for those who have to keep working. There is a certain atmosphere that no other time offers. A French song that embodies that summer feeling for me is “Lueur d’été” from the movie “Les Choristes.” The lyrics are almost like a poem dedicated to summer . . .

I write to you outside the very chapel where Our Lady of Fatima appeared to three children during a time in Portugal where anti-Catholicism was high. It's 104 degrees today yet I see thousands of pilgrims on their knees crawling to the holy ground. I ask myself, what can the world offer that would inspire such devotion?

Most of us think of “transfiguration” as something that happened only to Jesus, once upon a time, a long time ago, on a distant mountain in a land far away. Not so fast! It is something that happens to each one of us. God is all about life, and life is all about change.