John isn’t exactly a funny name to us but when St. John the Baptist was born, his relatives were scratching their heads over it. “Where did that come from? Nobody else in the family has that name.” “Elizabeth dear, shouldn’t the boy be…

Do we really get Mary? We know God made her perfectly sinless. She needed to be perfect, because Jesus would take his human nature from her. That’s why she was humble, meek, and so, so good. And that’s where we get stuck. Everybody focuses…

Remember the 1990s when Ashley, Ashleigh, and Ashlee all ended up in the same kindergarten? That’s what it was like to research St. Hippolytus. I found two different Hippolytuses who claim the feast day, Aug. 13 and a third thrown in on…

July’s saint may have a funny name but let me tell you, Olha (890 – 969) was no joke. Just ask the Drevlians. They murdered her husband so she murdered them — 5,000 of them. Mafia style. That was before her conversion to Christianity. Olha,…

Finally, a woman! Have you noticed that most of our saints with funny names are men? It’s not my fault. There just aren’t that many women on the Eastern calendar. In June alone the ratio of females to males is 3:22. It’s really nobody’s…

In 1974, Robert Gutherman was a 14-year-old youth, one of 11 children growing up in the shadow of St. Katharine Drexel’s convent in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. He and his brothers had often served mass for the sisters. Though not yet declared…

What’s the name of that screwball comedy? The one with the two desperados? That one. Anyway, they’re in mortal danger. One guy makes a quick Sign of the Cross in a desperate plea for heavenly aid. The other guy looks at him, thinks for a…

We interrupt this Eastern Rite calendar to bring you St. Joseph. Why? Because St. Joseph (feast day March 19 on the Western calendar, patron of the universal Church) does not have a separate feast day on the Eastern calendar. This may lead…

Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems. Does it have to be that way? Or is there something we can do? Between 17 and 25, a person is bound to go through at least one life-changing transition, and probably several. We…

BY SUSIE LLOYD Talk about temptation. Two baseball buttons, a small boy, and a pocket just the right size. Joey had brought me the buttons while enduring a visit to Sew Bored, the fabric store. I had said they were not in the budget. Now…