Catholic. Pastoral. Trusted.
Journey through the liturgical seasons of the Catholic Church with inspiring poems and photos. Pause, immersing yourself in prayerful reflection. Then, during each liturgical season in real time, meditate anew with this piece to enrich your experience with God. Advent through Christmastide Rejoice, my Soul, in promises of spring, in...
If you “miss” the early part of the season, make its last week memorable with reflections, Scripture, and prayers. The weekend after Thanksgiving began 2021’s season of Advent. Our attention will dart from carving the turkey to trimming the tree. Before we know it, Christmas Day will dazzle us. Often,...
Analyzing and interpreting dreams has fascinated people through the ages. Theories and speculation about their purpose abound while disputes among neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers continue. However, for people of faith, the answer may lie in the Judeo-Christian history of dreams as vehicles for divine communication. The Book of Genesis says...
Dear Padre, • At reconciliation, can a penitent begin by saying grace? • Can a person sit in a dentist’s chair and receive the anointing of the sick? • And is the Eucharist the same if the “altar” is Mom’s table? The answers? Yes, yes, and YES! In his book...
Today’s Rome is home to about 900 churches, with twenty-four—referred to as tituli—tucked away in the Eternal City’s historic center. These two dozen houses of worship are among the world’s oldest and most fascinating, but pilgrims who travel to Rome may miss visiting them because they are unaware of their...
A Focus on the Erosion of Lives and Relationships Due to Alcohol Addiction First of a five-part series What would it be like to have an active volcano one hundred yards from your home? You never know when the volcano will erupt and destroy everything you own and everyone you...
Americans live in the land of opportunity. Our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are practically written in blood in the Constitution. We are surrounded by things that exist for the sole purpose of making us happy: food, drink, entertainment, vacations, endless apps on our electronics, and...
Mary of Magdala Blazes the Trail to Easter Mary Magdalene was one of the named women in the group who traveled with Jesus from Galilee. Many modern scholars believe her ministry during Jesus’ life on earth was as significant as Peter’s, albeit in different ways. Jesus said to her, “Mary!”...
Unlike previous Holy Weeks, the landscape for 2020’s prayerful remembrances last April was bleak and barren. Pope Francis celebrated the Eucharist without a congregation due to restrictions caused by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. The photos and video from inside virtually empty St. Peter’s Basilica spoke volumes about the global impact...
Often during this holy season, we lose direction and focus. Our spiritual GPS just stops working. We took umpteen road trips with our five boys when they were young. The question most often heard on those journeys was: “Are we there yet?” Close in age—all born within a seven-year span—our...
Being one global family means we are “us”; there is no “them”. 1 Corinthians 13 reveals the key ingredient that our global family needs now more than ever. I don’t know if there has ever been a year that more people have wished was over than 2020. If you’re like...
In the New Testament, only Matthew and Luke tell us about Jesus’ birth and youth. Our Christmas cribs harmonize and intermingle details from those two Gospels, but if you read the accounts without that conditioning, you will find that they diverge on many points, for neither evangelist was simply recording...
Catholics in two regions exemplify how to answer the call of Christ Jim Graves Today the number of homeless people in the United States is higher than the number of people who have their own home in America’s 32nd-largest city (Albuquerque, New Mexico, population 560,000). US data says the total...
America’s first Army chaplains supported soldiers during the American Revolution. They provided religious and pastoral care for the living and the dead, administered rites, and sometimes carried arms to join their congregations into battle. Chaplains have been by the sides of US soldiers and sailors ever since, in peace and...
At a Mass I attended recently, the priest gave an interesting homily on Luke 12. He explained that, depending on our choices in life, God’s spiritual fire could either be cleansing or destructive. While this seemed reasonable, his comments about voting during this election season were debatable. He challenged the...
There’s an incomprehensible quality to empathy that only the soul can grasp. It carries us to a place where we forget ourselves and take up the cross of another to shoulder their burden of suffering for a while. In that holy realm where we embody another’s grief, those afflictions are...
The highest form of charity is that shown to those unable to reciprocate and perhaps even to thank us in return.—Pope Francis Long before immigrants, refugees, and migrants became the subjects of modern-day hot-button political debates, the Catholic Church addressed the question of whether people have the right to emigrate...
Part 1: The Church in Crisis, Now and Then he Bible is an inexhaustible resource of spiritual insight and challenge. While the clerical sexual-abuse crisis has hung over the Church like a poisonous cloud, every problem poses an opportunity. “What can today’s Church, with its crises, learn from the Church...
As we live out the mysteries of our faith during the approaching Easter season, the rosary offers a beautiful, meditative guide, inviting us to reconsider specific events and revisit familiar themes of salvation history. Journeying through Lent toward Easter, we have yearned to see Jesus rise triumphantly above a world...
There is an indescribable mercy in the gospel that opens the hearts of broken people and draws them into a life devoted to reflecting the relentless grace of the crucified Savior to a lost and weary world. It is a mystery that conquers the most hardened, sinful soul and lifts...