My daughter is on a Mr. Rogers-watching kick again, thanks be to God. We have an Amazon Prime membership, which means we can stream nearly every episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood made after 1979 for free. Rosie likes to watch a whole week of episodes at once, skipping ahead to the Neighborhood of Make Believe segments, which I told her was cheating. When I was her age, I had to sit patiently through an entire episode of Mr. Rogers to get... Read more
“Things Christian Women Hear” is trending on Facebook and Twitter. That’s quite a topic; I want to do a Catholic version. Here are a few of the things that Catholic women hear. Here’s one. It took place in the same Steubenville secular religious community where I’d been chided for musing that the Virgin Mary was probably traumatized by the death of her Son. I sat down with my coffee cup beside a well-dressed lady I didn’t know well; she smiled invitingly. “Tell... Read more
It may have come to your attention that the Protestant blogger Jeff Maples visited Resurrection Matins at a Greek Orthodox church, and didn’t like it. In fact, he was scandalized by the whole thing. He pronounced it a “dead church.” Apparently he has a habit of going to churches other than his own and pronouncing them alive or dead, based upon whether he liked them. He really, really did not like the Greek Orthodox Resurrection Matins. I can’t decide what... Read more
I couldn’t sleep. My daughter was next to me– she tends to have insomnia, and has anxiety when she sleeps alone, so I’d bundled her into bed with me again. I read The Hobbit to her, and said her prayers; now she was finally sleeping peacefully, but I was not. It was chilly, in the bedroom, but the days have been too warm to have the heat on at night. I was in the first stage of a bad head cold,... Read more
It was going to be my first Pascha in the Byzantine Catholic church. I wanted to get everything right. This was impossible, of course. I had not been physically well enough to fast for all of Great Lent, as I’ve already written about. I drank vegetable-and-yogurt smoothies and ate beef and cauliflower every day, because that’s the food my stupid autoimmune body can digest. I even brought myself a meat-containing snack at the Wednesday Night soup social. Now I was... Read more
My friend Theresa posted a question on Facebook yesterday. “Can anyone remember which saint had hidden stigmata during life? That was only revealed upon death?” “Catherine of Sienna,” I said. She had invisible stigmata that hurt her every day, but it only became visible on her deathbed. There may have been others, as well. “Wasn’t it Saint Pio?” said somebody. No, Saint Pio had the opposite. He had stigmata throughout life that closed up the evening he died. Theresa was... Read more
Somewhere, they are lifting up the evening sacrifice. Scarlet stains the stone before the Holy of Holies where once they hid Mercy Seat but I will never see that stone. Somewhere, they are making ready for Shabbat– finish all your labors now for night is coming and the day of solemn rest. But I will never see another night. Somewhere is a Seraph whose burning eyes reflect the Glory Who, veiling hands and feet and face adores the Presence Holy Holy Holy... Read more
We have reached Good Friday and the end of our Lenten meditations. If anyone wishes to pray the Way of the Cross with us this afternoon and evening, here are links to all of our meditations in order on one page. Thank you for joining us in this Lenten journey, and may God grant you a blessed remainder of the Triduum and a happy Easter. The First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Death The Second Station: Jesus Accepts His Cross The Third Station: Jesus Falls the... Read more
We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You, because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world. When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb,... Read more
Today, Christians all over the world are celebrating Holy Thursday, the Thursday of the Last Supper. This is the night when Christ celebrated the Passover with His disciples; then He went out into the garden to pray. He was so terrified of what was to come that His sweat became like drops of blood. He prayed that the Father would let the cup pass from Him– but only if it was the Father’s will. And then Judas arrived with the... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In