Category: Catholic family

Featured Favorite: The Spirit of Simple Obedience

This little Visit with Jesus changed my life.  I left with the conviction that He was asking me to be a Sister.  What that meant, I really had very little idea.  I didn’t know a lot about religious life.  I didn’t know what kind of community I would enter, what I would do, or where I should turn.  What I did have, after this initial “call,” was the conviction that “if this is what God is asking me to do, then I’ll do it.”  As I have reflected back on this, years later, I thank my parents for helping instill this spirit of simple obedience to God in me in my early years, largely by their own example.

Featured Favorite: Today’s Good News

Pope Francis encourages us to proclaim God’s Word by the way we live. You can allow God to be God, living in your heart and working through you wherever you are, or you can do the sidestep dance and be miserable.
What will be your response today during the trials of sickness, financial worries, children acting out, and the overwhelming minute-by-minute demands of motherhood? Are you tempted to focus on yourself? Your needs? Or is the Holy Spirit inspiring you to become the good news?

Prayer Companion: Come, Holy Spirit

“Acquire the Holy Spirit and thousands around you will acquire salvation” – St. Seraphim of Sarov

St. Seraphim dreamed big. Honored by both the Roman Catholic (today) and Orthodox (January 15) calendars, this wonderworker emphasized seeking communion with God as the true purpose of life for every Christian. St. Seraphim’s life demonstrated that everything else was merely the means for “acquiring the Holy Spirit.”

Wait! Didn’t we acquire the Holy Spirit at baptism and weren’t we sealed with the gift of the Spirit at Confirmation? Can’t we acquire more of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Reconciliation or receive the Eucharist? A resounding “yes” to all of these.

God Bless the Unbroken Road

Many faith journeys and conversion stories are filled with trials and conflict, with obstacles and hesitance—a “broken road,” as they say. My road, though fairly long and winding, isn’t so broken. I’m not saying that I’ve never had any spiritual struggles—I’ve had a few. The most notable one was my family’s move from Long Island to Rochester, NY, during a difficult time in our marriage. This simple change of jobs was supposed to end in Syracuse but that didn’t work out, so we scrambled to make a move to Rochester with the same company. I didn’t even know where Rochester was! Then we couldn’t find a house in the area where we were looking. I was fighting God at every turn because I had a plan and he wasn’t cooperating!

As it turns out, God’s plan was way better than mine. We’ve never been better, and the move ultimately resulted in my conversion to the Catholic faith. My road has been an intellectual journey. But let me start closer to the beginning.

Friar’s Corner: Safe haven in Jesus’ love

It seems to some of us that the coming election is critical for the survival of our country. It is almost as if we are headed into a civil war. There has been an ongoing battle between good and evil, God’s love and light and satan’s evils. Catholic Canon Law speaks about the option between two forces, choosing the lesser of two evils. We may not like many things on either side. Which one would provide the best way forward?