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 […]
Living the Christian faith comes down to these three ways of life: prayer, humility, and obedience. No matter who you are or where you come from, if you truly want to be a committed and faithful Christian: (1) you must spend some serious time engaged in vocal prayer (both privately and with the community in […]
By now you probably have heard that a massive typhoon hit the Philippines last Friday. Named Haiyan (or Yolanda), the typhoon is reportedly the strongest ever recorded in history, with winds of 195 miles per hour and gusts up to 235 mph. Early reports coming out of the country say that as many as 10,000 people lost […]
“It seems to me that a principal cause of the loss of faith is the dropping off in the practice of the family rosary … the abandonment of the family rosary is a main reason why so many Catholics have lost the faith…. the Church of the future is going to consist solely of those […]
When I visited a fertility clinic for diagnostic tests a few years back, the place was packed to the gills. The nervous energy pulsed through the air as women considered investing their savings for treatments. But this isn’t just another infertility story. This one includes a miracle from an obscure Medieval saint: St. Leopold of […]
No matter how hard we seem to try, we cannot avoid silence altogether. We are obliged, for example, to deal with the natural silence that comes with sleep, sickness, death, and sorrow. We also find ourselves dealing with moments of everyday silence that come right after waking up, during the morning commute, on a lunch […]
At midday on Sunday the Pope appeared at the window of his study to recite the Angelus with the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square and, before the Marian prayer, he commented on today’s Gospel reading in which Jesus tells a parable on the need to pray, always and incessantly. “The protagonist is a widow […]
“Hey Patti, I’m getting serious about praying for my family. I’m going to do a 40-day fast and daily rosary, do you want to join me?” My friend Shellie Rusch asked me this recently. She has six kids and we have a spiritual sisterhood in many ways. As a wife and mother of ten, I […]
I sat in my kitchen on the morning of Labor Day, watching and listening to the activity around me. My husband and I, along with our three youngest children, had arrived home on the previous evening from a three-week vacation in Newfoundland and this was the first time that the family (nine of the ten […]
A while back, I asked someone for ideas for this column. “Why don’t you write about raising kids?” came the reply. Hmm. That would assume I would know what I’m talking about, wouldn’t it? Frankly, I’m not sure that I am an expert on the subject, even though all four of my children now qualify […]
I’m sort of a sucker for love stories. But then again—aren’t we all? Love is the most basic human need. The music we listen to, the TV shows we watch… everything about the culture we live in testifies to the fact that we are starving for real love that satisfies. Because of this, I believe […]
Among all kinds of cultural, political, and interfaith dialogues, the one between Christianity and Islam is arguably the most interesting. Many of my friends from the Western world regard Islam as some kind of a mysterious, exotic, almost “unknowable” religion. However, some scholars, such as Hillaire Belloc, view Islam not as a totally separate religion, […]
Faith leads us into prayer and prayer leads us into God. When the Holy Spirit descends upon us in baptism and confirmation the light of faith is turned on within us. It is renewed and brightened every time we are present for the epiclesis in Liturgy, share in the Eucharist, and sincerely seek God in […]
A simple examination of conscience helps build the moral life of a Catholic. It guides a Catholic towards holiness and sainthood. Like taking vitamins or brushing your teeth, it should be done daily! Find a set time where you will have anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes of quiet and solitude. If possible, also find […]
One Saturday not long ago, I was sitting in my living-room and Colin, my 5-year-old grandson, was on my lap. I don’t remember what we were doing — watching “Peppa Pig” on TV or reading a Dr. Seuss book or playing out another episode of “Good Guys vs. Bad Guys,” I’m sure. Colin grabbed my […]
We tried. Our cat….the one I have dubbed “Cat’…is indispensable and obviously knows it. Our son found ‘Cat’ outside his apartment a few years back and called to see if we could give her a home. He named her ‘Sheba’–but I’ve never quite settled into that name, so for me she remains – ‘Cat.’ I’m […]
Remember when you had all the answers about parenting—in other words, when you were single? Then you got married, conceived your first child, and were instantly unsure of yourself. You decided you must consult the experts. At least, that’s what happened to me. I spent my first pregnancy reading Dr. Sears and Greg and Lisa […]
I went through an extended period last year during which I had difficulty praying. The stretch lasted many weeks in which I couldn’t find the words to speak to God as I usually did, couldn’t sit silently in His presence as I usually did because I wasn’t certain He was there and struggled simply to say the […]
The “God moment” arrived during the performance of a high school musical one year ago. Not that it should have been confused with just any high school musical. This was the Youth Sing Praise program, an outstanding combination theater camp and religious retreat that has been operating for one week in June for the last […]
It is late, almost midnight. The St. Louis Cardinals ballgame ended just a few moments ago, so I turn off the radio on the nightstand. Now, the house is quiet, the bedroom dark. The only sounds I can detect are the dog’s snoring and my wife’s soft breathing as she lays sleeping next to me. […]
Not long ago, we were driving down Interstate 70 in the St. Louis area, just past the I-270 interchange, and saw a car pulled over by the police. Not just one policeman, though. There were at least three police cars there with colored lights flashing, Three cops! Wow, that has to be quite a feeling for […]
If I’d had any idea how much Mary would have grabbed hold of my heart when I started praying the rosary consistently I’d like to believe I would have started praying the rosary a lot sooner. Then again, she knew exactly when she could grab hold of my heart and bring it to her Son. […]
In talking to my mother the other day, she told me she had found a couple of the Christmas video greetings we used to make and send every year since we moved 900 miles away. I apologized for not getting them made in recent years. “I thought when the children got older we would have […]
Three men, brave and determined men, took that final leap into a new life; complete with new titles, responsibilities, and new homes today….never to be the same again. But they prepared for this over a seven year-span, immersed in the spiritual, biblical, and examples of those around them. They definitely had the support from family […]
