Just recently, Pope Francis said that the Church should be a “field hospital.” In the Central African Republic, this is now everyday routine. Thousands of people have sought shelter in the mission stations and monasteries. The Carmelite monastery in the capital Bangui has also been turned into a refugee camp. Normally the monastery is a […]
I have just finished my annual routine of climbing into the attic and hauling out the box that stores our much-used Advent wreath. Candles? Check. Prayers? Check. Matches? We’ll need to get more of those. Like most families, the season of Advent falls right in the middle of a very busy time. School, work, extracurricular […]
Catholics tend to have a love/hate relationship with the concept of a homily. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis laments how everyone suffers when it comes to the homily. The priest suffers because he has to give it, and the laity suffers having to listen. This can be made worse by the fact that preachers can have […]
The Advent season includes the feasts of many popular saints, including St. Nicholas, St. Ambrose, St. Juan Diego, and St. Lucy. As I mentioned in my post about St. Nicholas, I didn’t learn much about the lives of the saints until I was an adult. I recognized St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day because they […]
The season of Advent is about hope. That is the message to be taken from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans. His message of hope in Christ speaks to Christians throughout the millennia as it did to the Church at Rome c. AD 57. Back then the Roman Christians experienced persecution at the […]
Last week we kicked off the Fathers for Good Advent series with a reflection on the virtue of fortitude and discussed ways in which it can help us grow with our families in these blessed days before Christmas. (You can read Week One here.) This week, we match the cardinal virtue of prudence to our Advent […]
I never have been a big fan of winter. Give me 90-degree temperatures with a chance to wear shorts and a T-shirt rather than 20 degrees, layers of clothing and slick streets. I’ll take baseball, walks to the ice cream shop and the smell of fresh-cut grass any time. Well, there is one thing I […]
I just finished writing a thesis about the late Father Stanley Jaki’s work for a Master’s degree in Theology, and my brain hurts. I love that about scholarship. You learn, assimilate, and then possess new knowledge. It’s hard, but you earn it. In the end, it’s more exciting than going to the mall, buying a […]
Growing up, Saint Nicholas Day meant three things: the fireplace, stocking caps, and the biggest pair of shoes you could find. It started the evening before, when we finished the family rosary. We always ended our rosary with the ‘blowing of the candle.’ Well, actually it wasn’t a candle, it was a little oil lamp […]
“In Iraq there are fewer and fewer Christians. The persistent violence, fear, lack of work opportunities and the issue of safety for life and limb are forcing us to leave our country, our homes and our families,” Msgr. Shlemon Warduni reported directly on the tragedy which seems never ending. “The future for Christians in Iraq, […]
I am a conundrum: a rather outmoded sort of woman, ridiculed by modern career women, vilified by the earth’s prophets of doom and sanctified by the religious right. I was the least likely candidate to have a lot of children. I had never even held a baby before my first born.You would think having nine children would have […]
Second Sunday of Advent Meditation and Questions for Reflection/Group Discussion (Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-2,7-8, 12-13,17; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12) Growing in Godly Patience and Love Welcome one another, then, as Christ welcomed you. (Romans 15:7) Jesus sure has a lot of patience, doesn’t he? Day in and day out, he puts up with our erratic […]
After they rejected the hierarchical Catholic Church, one of the early tasks of the protestant reformulators was to redefine what Church is; more precisely, to define the visible nature of the New Covenant community of God’s chosen people. It being clear to them through sacred Scripture that Christ Jesus actually did established a Church; they […]
Have you ever looked at a priest or religious and wondered how it was that he or she came to be there – what made that person willing and able to say “yes” to God’s call? Susie Lloyd, author of Please Don’t Drink the Holy Water and Bless Me, Father, For I Have Kids, decided […]
A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture: “They glorified the God of Israel” (Matthew 15:31). Wherever we turn these days, Christmas music plays, and for some of us this year, the words to the traditional carols we’ve come to know by heart have suddenly taken on new meaning. Old familiar jingles about Christ’s birth now seem […]
Trying to come up with an intentional and authentic name for a blog is challenging. It needs to encompass a bit of who we are, and inviting enough for further readership outside of one’s own loving mother. I ended up choosing; Poured Myself Out In Gift. It is not something mind-blowing to be sure, or […]
How do we make “Keep Christ in Christmas” more than a bumper sticker in our family’s life? This Advent, let us prepare to welcome our Savior into our homes and into our hearts in a new and special way, setting our own pace for the season and setting aside the commercial pressures of the culture. […]
In my last article, I discussed the importance of evangelizing in ways that speak to the needs of the human heart. This is especially important, because the culture at large is too often allowed to control the conversation by insisting that the message of Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is one that is ultimately at odds […]
Just diving right in: 1. Do not get your news and information about your religion, your Church, your Pope, or anything even remotely related to any of the aforementioned, from secular mainstream media, whether televised, in print, or online. They are not with us, and they are not neutral. They are against us. Moreover, they […]
Recently, there was some discussion on the topic of private revelation in an article recently posted to Catholic Lane. I want at this time to point to some additional information that is not commonly known which will help shed some light on why the spiritual writers of the Catholic tradition as well as the Catechism […]
“Marketing a movie rivals to some degree running a Presidential campaign.” So says two term US Senator and 2012 Presidential contender, Rick Santorum. During last year’s election cycle, Santorum exhibited his organizational and communication skills in winning eleven Presidential primaries, enough to give Mitt Romney a run for his money. In part, no doubt, it […]
Hopes are high, ahead of the meeting of the Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East with the Pope. Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which is in full communion with Rome, spoke to the international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), remarking that he expects […]
In the 13 years I have been a practicing Catholic, I have been a traditionalist all but two of them. As a result, I have received communion on the tongue and kneeling for eleven years. I’ve also found that the way we traditionalists receive communion is something that many Catholics outside of the Extraordinary Form […]
The way to save marriage isn’t by new laws, but new hearts.
