August is here. And it feels in so many ways that the heat exacerbates our responses to difficulties and challenges. Tempers are flaring more (just drive anywhere for more than five minutes and you’re likely to encounter everything from mild rudeness to full-blown road rage). The fears we have for our planet are running deeper even as we run out of time to fix them. We’re suddenly aware that the summer is finite, to be counted in remaining weeks rather than months.Looking at the cale...

Moses heard God speak to him from a burning bush. Catherine of Siena had ecstatic visions of Jesus. Anne Catherine Emmerich experienced the stigmata. Margaret Mary Alacoque was shown the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The list of people—some saints, some not—who have seen, heard, or experienced God first-hand while still on earth can go on and on. These were dramatic encounters that left no doubt in the person’s mind that God was speaking directly to them.My name is not on that list. N...

Praying the Word of God, meditating on the Scriptures, entering into the life of Jesus in the Gospels…. We are told how important it is to pray in this way so that we will mature in Christ, transformed in the Spirit.But when we sit down to meditate, we might discover we don’t what to do. That "how" is what Saint Ignatius Loyola learned and then taught to millions who followed him both to his followers when we was alive and those of us who have benefited from his guidance s...

Once on a retreat I was finding prayer difficult. I felt dull, held back, resistant. I was praying with a passage from the Gospel of Mark, one of those simple passages about Jesus teaching and healing the crowds.As I was meditating on the Gospel passage, I imagined myself in the crowd. Suddenly Jesus approached me and took me by the hand. He started to walk with me so fast down the road that I could barely keep up. Just the two of us were on this lightning journey. I realized I couldn’t ke...

Sometimes it’s difficult for us to read scripture and superimpose a map over it—so much has changed since biblical times, the Middle East reconfiguring itself several times over—so not everybody knows that Jesus was in Lebanon when he visited Tyre and Sidon. In fact, Lebanon is mentioned in the Bible over 70 times, so it is surely holy ground.And the home of a saint.Youssef Antoun Makhlouf was born in 1828, in Bekaa Kafra (North Lebanon). He had a  passion for prayer, whic...

Oddly enough, it was long after I had a devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel that it even occurred to me to question where this “Mount Carmel” might be, and why it has such a special place in our lives. As we celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel this year, let’s take a moment to go back in time—and far away—to discover the origins of this special devotion.Some places are holy. Speaking from the burning bush, God told Moses the ground he stoo...

I must have been about eight years old when I first started creating comics. I remember drawing the adventures of a group of superheroes who would fight giant monsters and evil robots. I understand now why I was attracted to comics at such a young age. It’s the same reason that people of all ages and across many different cultures are drawn to comics—drawing, the heart of comic-making, is a universal language. Before humans could read or write, they were drawing on cave walls.My appr...

This Sunday we celebrate a special feast day—a solemnity, actually, which ranks above the Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time that would normally fall on this Sunday. It’s the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi.Not many people know that this feast is due to the initiative of a woman in the 13th century, St. Juliana of Cornillon. Or, rather, it’s due to the initiative of God, who inspired Juliana, who then acted on this inspir...

On June 13th, we celebrate the feast of one of the most beloved of Franciscan saints, St. Anthony of Padua. You probably know him as the saint to turn to when you’ve misplaced your keys or your wallet, and you may even have recognized that there are other things worth finding, too—lost friendships, lost faith, lost people.But how did Anthony become the guide to that which has been lost?The story has changed slightly over time with the retelling, but its essence is that a novice monk ...

My friend Gracie went to court again a few weeks ago.She’s not in any trouble—Gracie is one of the most law-abiding people I know—but her son is. He’s 18 and has been sporadically in trouble with the law for at least the last four years, mostly for stupidity. He’s sold marijuana. He’s passed on photographs to other kids that he shouldn’t have. That sort of thing. And every time it happens, Gracie is in despair and does what she can to get him out of the ...