“Bless our families, bless our children. Choose from our homes those needed for your work.”
I knelt with my family at the Vigil of All Saints and prayed the Archdiocesan Prayer for Vocations
of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We pray this prayer at
every Mass at my parish, but that evening as my son was dressed as a
priest-saint and my daughters dressed as saints who were religious
sisters in preparation for the All Saints party, I hoped that God would
choose all those from my home to do his work.
Perhaps it is a bold request and hope to desire my family to be like
that of Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of
Lisieux, who dreamt of and gave all of their children into religious
life. Yet, I only think of it because I have felt that these saints are
kindred spirits to my family, especially in the importance they placed
on a prayerful, God centered family life that was separate from the
influences of secular society. I also feel bold in hoping for it because
of the sacramental graces of marriage, which can transform all of our
human efforts into something better...
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...
Confessions of a Catholic Mom and Philosopher's Wife
Monday, November 19, 2018
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
NCRegister: When Jesus Brought My Miscarried Babies Back to Me
October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month, and
Oct. 15 is the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. This year I
was painfully aware of the day as friends posted their remembrances on
social media. I kept thinking about how a year ago I was pregnant with
our baby who passed out of me in early November. I could not muster the
emotional strength to face the day publicly, so I held onto my three
miscarried babies in my heart. I thought I had made it through my
grieving, but perhaps not.
When I went on a silent four day Ignatian retreat last weekend, I did not plan on praying about my miscarriages. In fact, during the four days of the retreat, I barely thought of them. I went through the Ignatian exercises facing other spiritual things. I got to the point where I though I had gotten all I needed on this retreat (i.e., cried all of my tears), and I would just rest peacefully with God.
But on Sunday morning, the retreat director encouraged us to allow God to give us the extra graces he still had to offer us. In fact, the last short day of the retreat was often when one received more graces. I took his advice to heart and decided to be open to the movements of the Holy Spirit...
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...
When I went on a silent four day Ignatian retreat last weekend, I did not plan on praying about my miscarriages. In fact, during the four days of the retreat, I barely thought of them. I went through the Ignatian exercises facing other spiritual things. I got to the point where I though I had gotten all I needed on this retreat (i.e., cried all of my tears), and I would just rest peacefully with God.
But on Sunday morning, the retreat director encouraged us to allow God to give us the extra graces he still had to offer us. In fact, the last short day of the retreat was often when one received more graces. I took his advice to heart and decided to be open to the movements of the Holy Spirit...
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...
Thursday, October 25, 2018
NCRegister:A Priest is Just a Man, Imprinted with a Sacramental Character
I picked The Devil’s Advocate by Morris West off the shelf of Loome Theological Booksellers
in Stillwater, Minnesota, flipping it over to look at the back. I was
immediately intrigued by the fact that West was an Australian Catholic
author. It took me another year to read the book, but I found that it
was providential for me to have read during this time of scandal in the
Church. It was helpful to read an account representing the state of the
Church between World War II and pre-Vatican II where the hierarchy was
detached from the day to day harsh realities of the People of God and
priests had the same failings as other men. In fact it was quite
familiar.
Morris West wrote the novel The Devil’s Advocate a couple of years after he spent time with a priest in the 1950s helping poor children in Sicily. He witnessed the state of the people there, and set his book in a similar setting among the poor, superstitious Italians in the hill country. He also was a witness to the politics of the Vatican under Pope Pius XII, and his novel provides for us the contrast between the bishops and cardinals striving for political power and the ill-educated clergy of the countryside. The stark, cool halls of the officials in the Vatican seem to have nothing in common with the barren, hot hills of the peasants, but somehow it is all the same Church.
It makes one think of St. Paul talking about the various parts of the Body of Christ, but it seems that in the Church the Head has lost touch with the Heart, and many of the seemingly insignificant parts are inflamed and infected.
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...
Morris West wrote the novel The Devil’s Advocate a couple of years after he spent time with a priest in the 1950s helping poor children in Sicily. He witnessed the state of the people there, and set his book in a similar setting among the poor, superstitious Italians in the hill country. He also was a witness to the politics of the Vatican under Pope Pius XII, and his novel provides for us the contrast between the bishops and cardinals striving for political power and the ill-educated clergy of the countryside. The stark, cool halls of the officials in the Vatican seem to have nothing in common with the barren, hot hills of the peasants, but somehow it is all the same Church.
It makes one think of St. Paul talking about the various parts of the Body of Christ, but it seems that in the Church the Head has lost touch with the Heart, and many of the seemingly insignificant parts are inflamed and infected.
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...
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