Spirituality

Have you ever been with someone as they passed from this life to the next? As a priest, I have been. I also hear many stories about someone’s last moments before drawing their dying breath. The richness of our Catholic tradition preserves…

I was 9 years old when Apollo 11 made history. Throughout the 1960s, it was nearly impossible to miss the excitement of America’s program of space exploration. Not all of it was triumphant. I remember looking at the front page of the New…

School is out for summer, the kids are home, and my life just got more complicated. I am now balancing their work and sports schedules, my work schedule, their chores and social events. As a busy family with seven children ranging from 3 to…

Worrying is a very common problem, which can be made worse by the belief that our problems our unique. Once we meet others who are dealing (or have dealt) with similar problems, we typically feel better. Even more comforting is when we…

This stage of my life is motherhood. As a mom of three children under the age of 9, it’s a busy life. It’s often thankless, needy, and there is little time to catch my breath. It can be consuming. If you’re like me, I’m not great at my…

Most feast days of the saints celebrate the day the saint died, went to heaven, and stayed put. Lazarus Saturday celebrates the opposite. It is the day Our Lord summoned his friend back to this life, despite four days and several spools of…

Holy Week and the Notre Dame Cathedral fire teach the same lesson: Tragedy exists to teach us faith and heroism. It’s right there in Sacred Scripture, in the letter of St. Jude. First, though: A lot of people have shared a lot of lessons…

We collapsed into chairs at the kitchen table with tall glasses of ice water. Unwinding after a long, brisk walk around the park, we chatted casually, two college roommates catching up on life. Soon our light discussion turned more serious.…

These days we are used to our confessions being entirely private matters between only ourselves and our priests. Any penance we perform we usually keep to ourselves. Seldom do we directly tell others about the sins we needed to have…

My path of discerning a religious vocation was a journey from an intellectual knowledge of God to a unique and personal relationship with him. God planted many of the seeds of my vocation through FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University…