Practical advice for living a more Spirit-filled life
On a plane recently, I overheard a conversation between a young boy — about three or four years old — and his father. Before the flight began, the boy repeatedly asked to play with his Legos; his father responded, “Not on the plane.” Eventually, the boy fell asleep. After napping through almost the entire two-hour…
An elderly priest conducting a retreat at the Motherhouse this summer asked for help with his cellphone. No matter what he did, his email messages would not send. The problem, it turned out, was simply the way he was tapping the “send” button. As I tried to model the requisite light, angled touch, I realized…
Earlier this month, several of the daily Mass readings came from the Book of the Prophet Hosea. As with many of the prophets, God asked Hosea to be a prophet in actions as well as in words. To show Israel just how far they had gone in abandoning the Lord, and yet how far their…
The host was lifted high in young hands, and I suddenly realized: some grains of wheat, originally unremarkable, had now become Christ’s Body. They had been “chosen,” so to speak. Chosen, too, was the priest, ordained just twenty-four hours earlier for the Dominican Order, now to carry the priestly imprint upon his soul into eternity.…
“Whoever serves Me must follow Me, and where I am, there also will My servant be” (John 12:26). Recently, one of the Sisters and I ran a weeklong Vacation Bible School in the Upper Peninsula. While there, we were privileged to visit the tomb of Venerable Frederic Baraga, the first bishop of the Diocese of…
A vivid memory of my childhood is the multicolored light spilling in through the stained-glass windows of our parish church, bathing the stone walls and floor in azure and scarlet. All the windows were beautiful, but exquisite was the rose window, situated high above the altar. My father, always touchingly awed both by beauty in…
