Dorothy Day, the renowned founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, once said in her later years: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” Years after her death, she must be looking down from heaven,…
Last weekend I went on retreat with about 30 people from across Ontario. We were a diverse group, with women and men of all ages, vocations and very different views about God and faith. Despite our seemingly radical differences, we…
When we think of Mary, we usually cast her in one of two roles: that of the quiet but consistently supportive mother or as the young virgin who answers God’s call to motherhood. Today, however, we celebrate Mary’s birth, an…
I first encountered St. Augustine’s Confessions as an 18-year-old university student. My professor, a kind and gentle priest from China, Fr. Peter Wong, extolled the work’s place in Christian history and its relevance for us today. Sadly, my friends and I were…
The feast of Mary Magdalene coincides with the anniversary of my mother’s death, a fitting intersection given the spiritual inspiration I’ve gained from each woman. Like Mary Magdalene, my mother’s faith ran deep and her life served witness to that…
For more than 1,500 years, Benedictine monasteries and convents around the world have operated under the Rule of Saint Benedict, a set of simple precepts designed to help religious communities lead an ordered, prayerful life. Saint Benedict’s guidelines address five…
As a child I always perceived saints as rather extraordinary women and men. Their faith and holiness always appeared well beyond my ability. Years later I discovered that many of the saints’ lives were much more alike our own. Many…
Have you heard the one about the funny saint? Talk about saints often focuses first on serious attributes: piety, for example, or a sense of selflessness. While an extraordinarily pious man, Saint Philip Neri, a 16th-century Italian priest and founder…
“Bring flowers of the fairest, bring blossoms the rarest….” Strains of this Marian hymn from my childhood float through my mind every May as soon as the tulips start to bloom. In the old days, of course, those tulips would…
Although only mentioned briefly in the Acts of the Apostles, the election of Matthias as an apostle illustrates for us the importance of discernment in the life of the Church. We are told that shortly after Jesus’ Ascension, on the…