This weekend offers a most unique moment in the sanctoral cycle as churches offer the annual blessing for pets, a lively and always unpredictable way to mark both the October 4th feast of St. Francis of Assisi and the gift…
The passion and perseverance that fuelled the growth of the Catholic Church in Korea can teach us all a lesson in faith. The first Church founded entirely by lay people, the Catholic Church in Korea dates back to the 18th…
The cross is at the very heart of our faith. As a symbol, it reminds us of God’s boundless love for us, and as a spiritual and historical reality it holds out the merciful promise of salvation. The Feast of…
Few popes in the Church’s history have had as great of an influence on the shaping of the Church as Pope Gregory. Born into a wealthy patrician family in Rome around 540, Gregory rose to prominence within the Roman government.…
There isn’t a mom I know who can’t relate – at least a little! – to St. Monica, the devoted mother of St. Augustine of Hippo, whose love for her child overcame their clash of wills and values. In what…
Today’s great Marian feast, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a day with joyful implications for all of us. The Assumption celebrates Mary having been taken into heaven, body and soul, at the end of…
Although many of us are accustomed to deacons serving in our communities, a permanent diaconate is a very new experience for those of us in the Western Church. Despite references to deacons in the Christian scriptures, and the profound witness…
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” The famous poetic assertion of Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins aptly summarizes the heart of Ignatian spirituality, an approach to God, prayer and life built upon the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius…
When my children were small, we used to visit my late in-laws every Sunday afternoon. My husband’s family originally came from France in the mid-seventeenth century, so my in-laws were Catholics of the old school. They embraced many traditions including…
At the heart of our Christian spirituality is the belief that we are a pilgrim people. From birth to death our lives are marked by rites of passage leading us to the day when we hope to enter into the…