Those of us suspicious of the pious platitudes that too often make their home in Catholic homiletic practice know that the feast of the Holy Family is a "code-red" day for such platitudes. We families assemble in our parishes a...
Renee Roden on the life of Thomas Becket as an icon of martyrdom. His martyrdom is not simply an expression of self-sacrifice. But authentic friendship.
There are some stereotypes that often accompany the college stage of a woman’s life. Some (like loving babies, studying in coffee shops, etc), I embraced. Others I did my absolute best to avoid (and we'll leave those ones to the im...
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes—
Some have got broken—and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt...
What surprises me, says God, is hope.
—Charles Péguy, The Portal to the Mystery of Hope
Every Advent I sit around a small prayer table with four-year-olds and contemplate the great mystery of messianic hope announced by the ...
Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Lucy, a third-century Sicilian girl who pledged her virginity to Christ and endured a martyr’s death when she refused to renounce her faith. Numerous versions of St. Lucy’s martyrd...
For some Christian people throughout the world, especially Mexican and Mexican-American Christians, December 12, of course, is the celebration of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. The feast commemorates her December 9–12, 1531 appearan...
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is a doctrine that continually mystifies me. Each year as December rolls around, I annually struggle to understand what exactly is so significant here that elevates this feast to a holy day of ...
What happens when experience is treated as an end unto itself? Madeline Running thinks about how young people might properly understand experience in college.
Brian McMichael of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend suggests that the pastoral rites for the dead are an occasion for practicing the virtue of hope.