What are you doing for Lent this year? We might come into Lent in a sort of automatic mode, where we follow the required practices and think that’s enough. Perhaps we have chosen to do more… but… before we go any further… we must ask ourselves the one crucial question: Who is leading us? Jesus […]

Saint Peter Julian Eymard’s Birthday Birthdays have always been a big deal for me, but one birthday memory stands above the rest. It was the morning of my 23rd birthday. I was sitting in my rocking chair, holding my newborn son, as the sun started to rise on our first morning home from the hospital. […]

The last time I attended a funeral Mass, I was really paying attention to the words of the prayers when I suddenly realized the power in what was happening before me: “At the death of a Christian, whose life of faith was begun in the waters of Baptism and strengthened at the Eucharistic table, the […]

They say good fences make good neighbors. Well established and clear boundaries help us all. They keep in what we want in and keep out what we want out. The first step when installing a fence is surveying the property. Then you dig and install the fence posts on which the fence will hang. But […]

In today’s Gospel, we hear Zechariah speaking for the first time after being silenced by his unbelief. “Filled with the Holy Spirit, he prophesied” (Luke 1:67). The months of silence bore great fruit; every day during Morning Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church, in unison, sings the words he spoke, The Canticle of […]

Today is the optional memorial of Our Lady of Loreto. The basilica of the holy house in Loreto was built around the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which tradition says angels carried from Nazareth to Croatia and eventually to Loreto. It was in this house that the Virgin Mary was born and raised. It […]

As we sit around our Thanksgiving table this year, for many of us it will be a smaller gathering than what we would have wanted. Many of us will have the opportunity, perhaps for the first time, to relate those who have had empty seats at their holiday table before, to those who have been […]

Memorial of Saint Josaphat Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us… I think these might be the most challenging words in all of Scripture. We pray them every day, so much so that we often don’t hear them anymore. When someone trespasses against us, hurt and anger swell up like waves; something […]

Our son came home from college one day and shared that he was the only one of his friends whose parents were still married. His world was shifting from a Catholic home-school community, where long-time married parents were the norm, to the “real” world, where we were now the exception. This was ten years ago. […]

Today marks twenty-eight years from the day I gave birth to my firstborn, and the memory is as fresh as ever. I remember grabbing my bag to head on to the hospital, and the mix of thoughts and emotions that flooded my whole being. There was excitement, fear, relief, apprehension, but above all, there was […]