You wouldn’t have known it by my 2013 “suggestion” list, which took up two separate posts — along with the usual monastic goodies list (the Summit Nuns have a lovely hostess gift!) — but last year at Christmas, we cut ‘way back on our gift list and increased our charity-giving. We liked that. It really helped re-orient our hearts and minds and de-emphasize the materialism that is taking over the season. For 2014, we are feeling inclined to repeat that... Read more
Welcome! Welcome! I shed tears of gratitude and joy that you have come round again, O Advent, to shake us from our torpor as early night comes, and the match is struck, and the message is brought home once more; that we are forever in the absence of light; it is beyond us and exterior until we make it welcome and bring it, like a lover, within. Welcome into our deepest void, welcome into the parts of us touched by... Read more
Over at National Review, they asked a few folks to share what they are truly thankful for, in the Year of Our Lord, 2014. Given my grouses about the holiday, my answer might surprise some: This Thanksgiving, I am giving thanks to God for the lives of my in-laws, one a daughter of Sicily and the other the son of immigrants. They are either approaching age 80, or on the other side of it, and 2014 has been the first... Read more
Maybe. When it was announced that Lifetime network would be airing a “reality” series chronicling five young women as they “discerned” whether or not they have religious vocations, I was as skeptical as Diana von Glahn, who felt pure dread at the prospect. More than dreading, I was a bit repulsed by the very idea. Having experienced my own vocational discernment as long-looking — a process both serious and slow, and full of challenges to my own self — the... Read more
Ever since October’s Synod on the Family issued its final relatio — which managed to pay one line of lip-service to single parents, Katrina Fernandez has been feeling all-too-keenly aware of how detrimental it can be for a church to label-and-divide the flock for tailored worship and social events. When the news broke that Pope Francis would be meeting with families living with autism, she sounded a well-pitched note of concern: I’m glad the families in the video above are... Read more
As everyone should know by now, I have “issues” with Thanksgiving that are in great measure about my family’s utter inflexibility on the menu: The year I declared “NO PASTA” and served them a spinach/eggdrop soup, they sat around the table like it was a funeral. They kept asking me if this was how Germans eat Thanksgiving, and wondering why the soup couldn’t have little macaronis and meatballs in it. When I asked my mother-in-law if, these year, she was... Read more
He became incarnate so he might share our lot with us, and he died in order to redeem us. In Co-Workers of the Truth, Pope Benedict XVI, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, put it this way: It is obvious that God did not intend Israel to have a kingdom. The kingdom was, in fact, a result of Israel’s rebellion against God and against his prophets, a defection from the original will of God. The law was to be Israel’s king, and... Read more
As our friends in Summit are reminding us, Pope Francis says today, November 21, is a day to thank God for cloistered religious: At the end of today’s general audience, Pope Francis noted that this Friday, Nov. 21, is the liturgical Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Noting the Church will celebrate the Day pro Orantibus, dedicated to cloistered religious communities, he said, “It is an opportune occasion to thank the Lord for the gift of so... Read more
You might call her an “accidental innovator”. When Lisa Hendey tried to digitally explore better ways to be a Catholic while raising a family, she couldn’t find what she needed. So she created it. As she writes in her new book, The Grace of Yes, “I went looking for answers, and when I didn’t find them online, I bought a domain name and some of those For Dummies books about the Internet and launched Catholicmom.com.” The rest, as the saying... Read more
Jennifer Fulwiler is one of those people I can’t keep up with. I blink and she’s got a successful blog. I blink again and she’s got a reality show. I come back from retreat and she has another baby, and an annual woman’s conference. I get momentarily distracted and she’s released a bestselling memoir; I take a little nap and awake to discover that she’s got a radio show on Sirus! Seriously? I can’t even get through my email, and... Read more
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