Talking
-
An Unexpected First Communion and “Becoming” Greek Orthodox – Part One
Okay, I guess I should say up front, that — spoiler alert — our family is still Roman Catholic, but after having spent a week and a half in Greece and experiencing their different rite of worship, we feel a kinship with them that we hadn’t before felt. Maybe I should begin by saying that the Greek Orthodox are Catholic, but they are Eastern Catholics who split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054 (not to be confused with Byzantine Rites that are Eastern Catholics who recognize the Pope), and there is a history of tension that still exists between them. This tension is over a few differences, including but…
-
St. John Paul II and Seeking Jesus
Today is the Feast of St John Paul II. Honestly, he is one of my favorites! To encounter JPII was to encounter a true Father. He had a special love for young people — and we felt that love with every event, every word directed towards us. He understood our search for meaning and purpose and happiness in our lives — and he had a way of helping us understand that Jesus was the source of all of it. He understood our restlessness, and he met it with the TRUTH — he was willing to speak the truth, even when it was difficult or unpopular — and that truth SET…
-
We Begin Again
There is something about confession — something completely transformative — and yet so often we find ourselves going through the motions of a confession without really resolving to try to change moving forward from that moment of grace and forgiveness. It’s not to say that we won’t fall into the same sins again, but we should never accept those sins as part of who we are and we should never give up trying to put them in the past and keep them there. We are not our sins — not our sexual sins, our anger, our hatred or addictions — I could go on, but you get the idea. The…
-
How Denying Communion to Somebody Can Be a Merciful and Loving Act
Okay, going to say this up front, “YES!” to deny somebody Communion can actually be the most loving and merciful act a Bishop can do. Now, hear me out on this one. There is much discussion right now about the Bishops coming up with a united message and policy in regards to approaching a public figure who is persisting in serious sin in a public way and then presenting themselves for communion. To be honest, in many ways, this question was already solved about 2,000 years ago with one of our very first priests and Bishops, St. Paul. That’s right, he addressed this very question because he saw people getting…
-
The Importance of Summer Days
Ah, summer, I just love summer! For me, just the word SUMMER makes me smile. It brings to mind images of sunshine, sundresses, laughter, celebration, swinging on porches while crickets chirp nearby and epic family adventures. How about you? I suppose if every day were as carefree as a summer day, summer wouldn’t be as special as it is — but every day is not like a carefree summer day — and that is why summer has a special place in my heart. When I talk about Heaven with my kids, it is the days of summer that most quickly come to mind. When I envision the place that God…
-
To Be a Woman is a GIFT
To be a woman is a GIFT, and I just wish every woman would realize just how much of a gift it is. I wish I could convince her that her femininity and her unique feminine genius should be cherished and embraced and shared with others. There are some forces in the world that seem to be intent upon hiding the glory that it is to be a woman — who try to keep women from truly embracing what makes them different from men and instead tries to force us into some warped idea of what it means to be a woman. They stand to benefit from manipulating women into…
-
Remedies for Sorrow and what the Saints Had to Say About It.
On this side of Heaven, we are going to have sadness and sorrow — it’s inevitable — but the Church and the Saints that have gone before us have much to say about sorrow and a gloomy disposition. I figured since half the world has gone a little cray-cray, maybe it’s a good time to share some simple thoughts for keeping the “gloom” at bay. As somebody who is naturally a bit on the melancholic side of the temperaments, I have benefited from approaching those tendencies with a consistent prayer life and by gaining practical wisdom from the great minds that we are blessed to have in the Church. We…
-
Male and Female He Created Them!
If I’m being absolutely honest, I didn’t always appreciate being a woman. I once looked upon my “femaleness” as something of a burden. As a young woman, cycles and the changing relationships with guy friends and all the other things I associated with becoming a woman seemed burdensome. Honestly, with all the pressure to go to Ivy league schools and “make something of myself”, getting married and having babies seemed to be a hindrance to all my hopes and dreams. Without knowing it, the change in the culture around me had informed my ideas of what it meant to be a woman — and not for the better. The conclusion…
-
Barcelona & Staring at the Darkness For Too Long
A few years back, we took our kids to hike a section of the ancient pilgrim path known as the Camino de Santiago. It was on this hike that we had a birds-eye view of a large statue of Jesus, overlooking the city of San Sebastián, Spain. Honestly, we needed that perspective. We needed it because we were trying to regain hope in our hearts. Only a few days before, we had arrived bleary-eyed in Barcelona, and no sooner did we step foot off of our metro, but John was pick-pocketed. Welcome to Barcelona. Oh boy, not the best way to start a trip! Perhaps in retrospect, that rude awakening…
-
Virtue Signaling, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Battle for the Human Heart
Okay, I have to say this up front, some of you reading this have no idea what virtue-signaling is — and if so, you are blessed, indeed! Seriously! It likely means you aren’t on social media or watching mainstream news on the regular — because if you are in those places, you are most definitely being exposed to virtue signaling and may not realize it. Even if you don’t frequent those places, it should matter to you, because loved ones are likely regularly in those spaces and being exposed to a world of virtue-signaling, pressuring, guilt-mongering and the like — all in order to control people and manipulate them into…
