Parents don’t often get to give their children commencement speeches at graduation, but they do have the benefit of having produced a 18 year essay for their children revealing what they hope their children will hold in their hearts when they pack off for college. 

For the past year, my husband and I have engaged in a variant of the discipline of Saint Bridgette, saying 15 Our Fathers and 15 Hail Mary’s every day.  It is designed to encourage souls to pray for the souls in Purgatory. 

Imagine a field of 50,000 flowers, all the same kind and all considered rare.  Now imagine people deciding they didn’t like the flowers.  Imagine whole crowds of people uprooting and burning and destroying all but 5000 one at a time.

The other day a woman meeting my whole family for the first time asked, “So are you done?”

As a mom of nine, who has had to fight to prevent the demon of post partum depression from entering into the equation, I crafted a formula I had to follow after each child. 

Over the course of weeks, I’d been praying to be more responsive, more present, more loving to my daughter, to this one daughter with whom I seem to easily slip into having a cooler heart. 

This piece was inspired by a fellow writer who created a thread asking how we could save the world and if the world needed saving. 

Motherhood is a lifelong lesson in humility.  In the beginning, you surrender your body.  When you first see the child face to face, any part of your heart still your own gets engulfed. 

A few years ago, a friend of mine lamented the troubles she faced with her only son. 

Every once in a while, I’m reminded that my son has Downs Syndrome.  Most of the time, my son is just my son and the day has its rhythms.  

Showing up for mass on time and worried that I didn’t look at the schedule to see if three of the oldest kids need to serve, we huddled guiltily in the back of the church.

The other day I heard a popular interpretation of the feeding of the 5000, wherein Jesus doesn’t really multiply the loaves and fishes, He just inspires everyone by His generosity to share what they have.

Bringing small children to mass is always an adventure. Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said “Suffer the little children to come to me.” Some days, even the bribe of donuts after church fails to secure a toddler’s cooperation.

My first experience of the wisdom of Cardinal Newman was the “Newman Center” where my parents served as part of a “happening” team.  The core questions asked at any retreat were “Who am I?” “

My husband loves the tiny bees that specialize in working the smallest of blossoms.  He can stand at his garden and watch them with a still intensity that reveals this is where he relaxes.

There is an internet email that most Catholics have seen, that includes a picture of the former pope with the founder of the Missionary of Charity.

The minutia of this world can oppress and does so with scandalous ease. Bills, dust bunnies, the scale, the cost of gas, a bad test grade, and the discovery of a hornets’ nest,

When the news broke that abortionist doctor, George Tiller had been shot dead in his Lutheran church wherein he served as an usher, people began to pray.

If it is the work of the Holy Spirit, it will last.
The stories, the projects, the events, the things I wish to be a part of or feel I have helped come into being, will sometimes cause me to get irritated because something is not happening as I would have it.

I was transferring tomatoes into bigger pots when it happened again.  The Unicorn came.  Knowing him as I now did, I assumed it was the tomatoes that attracted him.