You’ve probably heard the expression, “knock on wood.”  But what you may not know is that this popular saying refers to one of our own Catholic traditions – that of the recitation of the Rosary. The Rosary was a physical representation of one’s inner faith, and it was natural to finger or touch it when one was in distress or pain. “Knocking” the rosary beads together, people said, was sure to make one’s wish come true!The word itself comes fro...

Look around, at the state of the world, at the multiple crises erupting every day in every corner of the globe, and it’s easy to say, “How could it get worse?”Those were probably the same words used by people exactly one hundred years ago. In 1917, the western world was still engulfed in what would hopefully—and erroneously—be called the “war to end all wars,” warfare on a scale that no one had known before, a war that refined the use of poison, that cla...

Repetition. It’s often seen by those outside the faith as a real stumbling-block to understanding some key components of Catholicism—prayer, liturgy, even the calendar. “You say the same things over and over,” an acquaintance of mine complained one day, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. Do you really think that God didn’t hear you the first time?”Au contraire, mon ami: I am very sure indeed that God heard me the first time. I’ll even go a st...

In the Easter season the Church encourages us to read the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. What does that book have to do with Fátima? It’s not that the apparitions of Mary at Fátima can help us decode the Book of Revelation with all its visions. But at a deeper level, Fátima is about the main message of that book: We are in the battle of our lives, but have no fear because in the end, God wins!Many people have tried to figure out what the various vision...

Wonder. Being in the moment. Feeling close to God. These are all ways that our kids experience spirituality; and they could teach us a thing or two. All we have to do, perhaps, is put their experiences into a context. Ignatian spirituality, for example.Ignatian spirituality is so simple, and so fulfilling, that it’s easy to introduce into the lives of children. In fact, children are closer to many aspects of Ignatian spirituality than we are! We’ve taken a step away from the close re...

It’s sometimes easy to believe that we’re not measuring up to what God wants of us. Oh, we try to live good lives, but we often fall short of even our own expectations. We snap at our children. We forget a commitment we made. We have unpleasant thoughts about our next-door neighbor.When that happens, a lot of us feel that we’re the only people who have ever fallen short of doing what we should. We think that people in the early Church somehow lived better lives, purer lives, ho...

The final week in the "Pray to Your Father in Secret" Lenten Book Club.

The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.The concept is tricky: our God is three, but is also one. I remember as a child when my mother explained the classic water-ice-steam analogy to me, describing something with essentially the same properties but that takes different forms. It didn’t exactly clarify things for me; I was left vaguely wondering if God manifested himself differently at different temperatures—in the desert, say, or in Antarctica.B...

There may have been no more exciting—and frightening!—time to be alive in Europe than on the eve of the invention of the printing press, with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation already blowing winds of change through the Church. Perhaps it is precisely because of those winds howling outside that the young Thomas à Kempis (his name simply means Thomas from Kempis) wanted above all a quiet life. He was determined, it is said, that nothing would happen to him in his life...

Welcome to the Online Lenten Book Club!During these six weeks of Lent, we are reading and reflecting on the classic on prayer, Pray To Your Father in Secret by Jean Lafrance.  For more information about the book club, visit this blog post.  You can find Pray To Your Father in Secret at www.PaulineStore.com . Week 5, Chapter 4 - The Dialogue with GodYour real center of gravity is in adoration, in reaching ever upward. Too many people fall into the habi...