After a week wandering in the wilderness, I find it’s Sunday again. What a miracle! A chance to begin again! God is merciful. Sunday is an invitation to get back to first things. Because I let my life get too complicated sometimes. This business of being a Catholic is not that difficult. Being Catholic means believing a short list of things, understanding them as facts, and living my life moment to moment as though these facts were true. Listen.If God... Read more

It’s one of those mornings when God seems to be speaking directly to me. Maybe that’s because last night was troubling, one of those times in a 25-year marriage that challenge both partners. This is no big confession. We’ve all had times like these. Father Barnes gave his usual A+ homily at Mass today, saying that we shouldn’t think of God as a television set, where we can change the channel when we don’t like the message. No sooner had... Read more

I’ve never really had trouble praying. When I was growing up, my mother taught me to pray. And prayer was never confined in my mind to any specific time or place. It still isn’t now. Prior to my conversion, I had heard some Catholic friends speak about the difficulty of praying. I always thought, what is so difficult about it? Just do it.I’m still not sure what kind of problems they were having with prayer. I always thought it was... Read more

Blogging can be a lonely business, especially when it gets personal. Anyone with wit and blind endurance can blog about marital relations in pre-Constantinian Rome or post funny cat pictures (h/t Joseph Bottum). But try posting every day and long into many nights not just about Catholicism but about why Catholicism makes sense for you, and you’re going to hit some squalls. This post is the continuation of a series about how this blog began and developed. The series began... Read more

Guest post by Allison Salerno Have you ever felt the presence of raw evil? Just as I regularly feel to my bones the presence of God, I felt the presence of evil trailing me in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks. My husband narrowly survived the attack on Tower One of the World Trade Center, escaping from his office on the 68th floor 11 minutes before the building collapsed. He was a senior information officer in the media relations... Read more

CrazyIn a church by the faceHe talks about the people going under Only child know… A man decides after seventy yearsThat what he goes there forIs to unlock the doorWhile those around him criticize and sleep Nikos Deja Vu – Seal – Crazy – Funny home videos are a click away And through a fractal on that breaking wallI see you my friend and touch your face againMiracles will happen as we trip But we’re never gonna survive unlessWe get... Read more

I never met my mother-in-law, Ruthie McNiff, but I feel a new kinship with her now that I have become a more frequent visitor to the first Catholic chapel ever established in an American shopping mall. Katie says her mother, who died before we were married, was a big fan of the St. Thérèse Carmelite Chapel-in-the-Mall, tucked behind the Carmelite Gift Shop in the basement of the Northshore Mall in Peabody, Massachusetts, right under Joe’s American Bar & Grill. I... Read more