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…

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…

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…

BY SUSIE LLOYD When Immaculée Ilibagiza first published her 2006 memoir Left to Tell, it was with the modest hope of sharing the book with friends. Her agent, however, told her to quit her job. The book tells in harrowing detail about the…

BY SUSIE LLOYD 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the children were nestled all snug in their beds. Nope. Not us. We were going to Midnight Mass. The sun had gone down at 4:30 p.m., and the dark hours which followed made Christmas Eve…

by Susie Lloyd Audrey Assad is more than a vocalist; she is a voice. Her music expresses a search for God that is at once inspiring and confounding. One moment ethereal and delicate as a butterfly born aloft on a gentle wind, and the next…