“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.” [...]
My dear sister in Christ, I want you to know that I see you, and that it is my hope, my prayer, that this letter will bring you some comfort and peace. I hope that, by sharing my experience, you will no longer feel so alone. For the recently engaged, the world tells you to [...]
How I would like to meet my sister, St. Kateri Tekakwitha — the first Indigenous woman to be canonized. How I would like to sit in the presence of her genius, to listen to her stories, to ask her what she would say to our Church today. For many people, the life of St. Kateri [...]
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 [...]
Memento Mori - Always remember you will die. I do not have any tattoos (and do not plan on ever getting one), BUT I’ve decided that if I were to get something permanently imprinted upon my body it would be this phrase. Dramatic? Perhaps a little. Morbid? Far from it. In fact, I find it [...]
As a young girl (and to this day), I loved the movie The Sound of Music. I had great aspirations of being a spunky, joyful, faithful, romantic Maria, swinging my carpet bag and guitar whilst belting out “I have confidence in sunshine!” All of the songs brought me great joy, but there were some that [...]
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.
Caitlin Sica 