Often when I'm reading, I come across a sentence or phrase that stops me short. What does that mean? How can I process the idea? If it w...

 Remember Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz:  We don't need to go far from home to find incredible beauty with ample reason to prai...

I always decorate the house for Christmas over weeks, not days. The stripping as the season nears the end also takes time. My first action t...

I love this painting by Luc-Olivier Merson, (1879). If I ever get to Boston I'll make a point of going to see it at the Museum of Fine A...

Everyone has traditions that they repeat again and again over the years. One of ours is decorating graham cracker houses. We usually do it d...

How do you rebel in a culture that encourages every kind of evil and insanity on the planet? When tattoos and body piercing and weird haircu...

Yesterday was St. Francis de Sales' feast day. What a great saint! I'm often a day late and a dollar short, so I was reading about S...

Suppose we were in a courtroom to discuss the murder of Jesus. Who would be in the dock? Judas? Caiphas? Annas? The members of the Sanhedrin...

I'm finally on the home stretch of the pope's encyclical on evangelization and I love the title of Chapter V: Spirit-Filled Evangeli...

Nothing announces the nearness of the Messiah like the O Antiphons. Part of the Church's Liturgy of the Hours for hundreds of years, the...

One of my favorite things about the Magnificat prayer book is the lovely religious art both on the cover and the art article in the back. Th...

Pray Advent Well.   Did you know that the first candle lit on the Advent wreath represents Bethlehem? I never knew that until I read the art...

Four of our five children and their families will be joining us for Thanksgiving. Three will be staying with us. That means six adults and...

Worrying trends in Ireland paint a picture of a country whose strong Catholic tradition is eroding. I'm not surprised. I visited Irelan...

Russell Shaw is warning faithful Catholics not to withdraw from the culture but to participate in the "new evangelization." He see...

Do you ever think about the people who have influenced your life even though you've never met? Our family and friends impact us in obvio...

Despite all the bad news, I find myself filled with hope these days. Why? Because generations X and Y (the birth ages my kids fall into) are...

Thinking about St. Martha today reminded me of a poem that hung in my kitchen in Alexandria for years. (Now where did that go? Lost in the...

"Pick up your cross and follow me." "The world urgently needs a re-awakening of the Church in our actions and in our public...

The world is going to hell in a handcart...or maybe, in today's technological age when things are bigger and faster, a jumbo jet. It...