Faith

St. Patrick’s Day is one of those holidays which has grown so big in scope that it is difficult to dwell entirely on the man whom the feast celebrates. Between people clinging onto their 1/16th Irish heritage, fanciful stories of missing…

For someone like myself who lives in the Northeast, Lent can be a rather dreary time of year. The weather is miserable, the motivation for work is nowhere to be found, we’re past the charm of winter and well before the beauty of spring. It…

Dear Father, I know praying together as a couple is important to do, but my husband feels awkward about it, and honestly, I do too. How can we overcome our hesitation, and how should we start?  — Anonymous, Missouri First, thank you for…

Since we are on the subject of “breathing with both lungs lately,” let’s talk about how Eastern rite Catholics practice Lent. Easterners don’t do Lent cold turkey. Maybe because it’s too hard (read on) or maybe because the Slavs are just…

Katharine Drexel knew what money could do. From the time she was very young, she and her two sisters had helped her beloved stepmother Emma minister to Philadelphia’s needy, opening the family’s home three times a week to people who needed…

Lent this year comes at the end of a long winter. The gray skies and lack of sunshine can be taxing on our spiritual and psychological health, and we may not feel motivated to enter into this holy season. But Lent can be forty days of…

by Jeannie Ewing In the aftermath of significant and devastating loss, what matters most to those who are grieving is the gift of one’s time — to listen, to care, and to just be present. It’s not so much that something specific must be said…

“The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” — Pope Benedict XVI You change into your comfortable jammies and settle yourself in the recliner. A text message lights up your phone: Your…

by Jeannie Ewing “One day you will have a son who will do great things for God.” Through a stranger  My fingers gingerly traced these words in a diary I kept more than 20 years before when I was a naïve teenage girl with no experience with…

“There is ugliness in us, isn’t there?” the priest begins. “We are flawed. We are human. And God wants us — God is commanding us — to take all of the ugliness we work so hard to bury deep within us, to take all that poison, the aspects…