Catholic. Pastoral. Trusted.
Sidebar by Sarah Reinhard Lent is the time of year I love to hate. It’s all too easy for Lenten practices to turn into big, impossible jobs. And yet, after the overload of Christmas, there’s something about the spartan that’s appealing. The three pillars of Lent are fasting, almsgiving, and...
Back in the last century—in the days before mobile devices and the internet, before texting and webcams—my dorm room housed an instrument called a telephone. To keep long-distance calls as inexpensive as possible, my parents devised a signaling routine. I would call home in Springfield from my dorm room in...
The safety drill on airplanes is familiar. After you’re seated, the flight attendant explains that if oxygen masks drop from the overhead compartment, parents must put their masks on first and then assist their children. As I sit through those drills, I sometimes wonder if I would be able to...
Contemplation is one of the most profound, yet often misunderstood, types of prayer in the Christian tradition. Profound because it plumbs the depths of the human soul and exposes it in silence before the mystery of God. Misunderstood because many of us mistakenly believe it pertains to a select few, not ordinary people like us....
Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, the founder of the Redemptorists, was known to tell people: Pray always, and if you cannot pray, pray that you can pray. He understood that prayer is an essential part of Christian life. This ongoing communication with the Divine gives us the opportunity to express our needs, wants, desires,...