Not much factual information about Mary’s birthday is known. We have been taught that she was conceived without sin as the Immaculate Conception. We know that her parents were Anne and Joachim whose feast we celebrate at the end of…
The liturgical tradition does not have a ceremony for every scenario of loss but it does offer a rich ritual repertoire from which we can draw inspiration and hope. On this Seeds of Faith blog, I am exploring how the…
The liturgy does not have a ceremony for every loss but it does offer a rich ritual repertoire from which we can draw inspiration and hope. From September 2021 through June 2022, I will explore with you here on this…
Happy New Year! Welcome to 2022! Today, January 1, is a day that offers much to celebrate. Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Mary was the first apostle to her Son. She said “yes” to God’s…
Today’s culture has begun to realize that recent decades of overzealous positivity have led to unsustainable expectations for happiness and success, often with dire consequences. The mantra in this burgeoning awareness of mental health is: “it’s okay not to be…
When it comes to our relationship with the Blessed Mother, it is valuable for our own prayer life to see how the liturgical celebration of the Immaculate Heart has been presented to us, and to see how the changes over…
Every age has its own moments of meaning. Imagine a rural village, Cova da Iria, in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. The world was changing rapidly. Portugal was becoming increasingly more secular. The world was at war. Three shepherd children, Lucia do Santos and her cousins Francisco…
This beautiful painting of the Annunciation of Our Lord is provocative. It presents a very real depiction of Mary, the mother of God. A young girl wakes and thinks about the day ahead of her: chores, family activities and the weather.…
On World Day of the Sick last year, it was still business and life as usual in Canada. Remember that innocent time, before terms like “coronavirus,” “PPE” and “physical distancing” entered our daily vocabulary? We didn’t think twice about being…
Miss America! ¡Qué guapa! I love what you’ve done with beauty. You took its pure, lily-white supremacist notion and introduced it to some salutary sunshine. Your body is as shapely as three contiguous continents. Your hair is charcoal cornsilk. From…