“Hold fast, daughters, for they cannot take from you the Our Father and the Hail Mary.” — St. Teresa of Avila One of my professors in grad school, Dr. Timothy O’Malley, once commented on people’s state of busyness. “Hey, how are you?” someone will ask. And we often reply, “I’m good, I’ve been really busy.” [...]
When we truly encounter Christ, we cannot help but be radically changed. We see this pattern repeated throughout history. St. Matthew, the tax collector, turns from his corrupt life and becomes a disciple of Jesus. The woman at the well leaves behind her life of lustful, broken relationships and thirsts only for living water. Zacchaeus [...]
“The woman’s soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold” (St. Edith Stein) About 1 in 5 Americans, ages 18 and older, bear the cross of a diagnosable mental illness. I am one of the adults who makes up that statistic. I have experienced first hand the weight of the cross that [...]
Many of us are familiar with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe – the Blessed Virgin Mary, surrounded by light, standing on a crescent moon held up by an angel, clothed in a turquoise mantle that is embellished with stars. But how did this image come to be so revered? To understand, we must [...]
Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.St. Catherine of Siena Imagine the scandal that would arise if Pope Francis decided, on a whim, to move the papacy from Rome to another country (say, France) and begin to indulge in a life of luxury and avarice. Then suppose that the next six popes followed suit. [...]
When I was 18, I struggled with my identity as a woman, attempting to reconcile my deepest desires with the way of the world and the ways of God. I longed to love and be loved. In pursuing these desires via the way of the world, I was left empty, tattered, spiritually destitute. Two years [...]
Saint Gemma Galgani and Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton devoted their entire lives to Jesus. They show us that we must run to His mercy and unite ourselves wholly to Him.
“In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.” So begins Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, one of the greatest poems of Europe’s Medieval Period. The long (over 14,000 line) epic is written as a first person account of Dante’s travels through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Heaven (Paradiso). Recently [...]
In the words of Claire Swinarski, author of “Girl, Arise!,” “I’m a feminist for the same reason I’m bold and honest and sometimes ragey: because Jesus was all of those things. In a time when women were some of the lowest of the low, Jesus embraced them with open arms.” I could not agree more. Yet, as I sat in my English class, I was wary of the next unit we were entering into: feminist literary criticism.
When I think of Jesus, anger is the last word that comes to my mind. I’m much more comfortable talking about him in terms of love, humility, mercy, and forgiveness — but rage? That’s why I find today’s Gospel, in which John recalls the moment in the temple when Jesus becomes enraged, so unsettling. This [...]
Caitlin Sica 