Spiritual Attacks on the Expectant Mother (and How to Combat Them)
Whether a woman is expecting her first child, or her fifteenth, pregnancy is filled with many emotions. There is joy and excitement mixed with anticipation and a little nervousness. All these emotions are appropriate, given the weight of what this new little life entails. Like mothers throughout time, I felt these slew of emotions during […]
Children of God: Lessons on Sainthood from the Parenting Trenches, Part 1
The other night at bedtime, I vowed not to read any stories to anyone who did not clean up their toys. When they saw that there was no possible appeal of this horrible sentence, my children climbed up in the rocking chair together and read each other a story. Even though they were conspiring to […]
In Iraq, Little Churches to be Born
Writing in the 2nd century, Tertullian once famously said that the blood of martyrs if the seed of the Church. If this is true, then the consequences of this are even more acutely felt today in the 20th century, where more Christians have been martyred than in all the previous centuries combined. Earlier in June […]
Embracing Edith Stein: A Review
Anne Costa’s book, Embracing Edith Stein, was my traveling companion on my recent trip to Missouri. I wish I had spent more than a few hours with the book. I fully intend to revisit her someday when I have several days to digest her teachings. Anyone who has followed my blog for any length of time […]
The Single Best Way to Reduce Abortions
When Lisa Selin Davis told a cabdriver she was going to have an abortion, he pulled the car over on the Brooklyn Bridge in a blizzard. He begged her not to do it. Davis, then a 22-year-old aspiring filmmaker, had conceived the child with a married man she met at a film shoot. But she […]
Love is Patient, Love is Kind
My baby woke me up at 11, 2, 4 and 6:30 am. The bug bites keep me uncomfortable. I miss my husband – we’ve been apart for almost one month. I am surrounded by my family, the people who I love the best and who know all my buttons. They fix me breakfast and take […]
Where Two or Three are Gathered
Many Catholics walk the path of faith alone, without the support of fellow believers. Our parishes are filled with people who come to Mass every Sunday but have never personally experienced God’s love. God desires us to experience his love, yet sometimes it is hard for us to open ourselves up to Him. One way […]
Religion, Relationship, and New Life
“Christianity, it is said, owes this, that, and the other to Judaism. It has borrowed this, that, and the other from Hellenism. Or from Essenism. Everything in it is mortgaged from birth…. Are people naive enough to believe, before making a detailed study, that the supernatural excludes any possession of earthly roots and any human […]
Five Books for the Catholic Mom’s Soul
Living my vocation is hard. So, so hard. However, when I truly invest myself completely in loving and serving these humans that God has given me, the graces flow and joy abounds. Its true, what they say: If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. To that end, over the last few years I’ve been seeking […]
A Gift for My Grandmother and Saint Anne’s Gift to Me
The summer of 2008 was a summer of opportunity for me. I was able to attend the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City, Canada with other young adults from the state of Wisconsin through Catholic Youth Expeditions, a retreat ministry founded by Father Quinn Mann, a priest of the Diocese of Green Bay. As part of […]
Desperately Seeking Community
Disclaimer: This piece is written in the style of a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew a junior demon, Wormwood. This is based on C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, which is well worth a read. My dear Wormwood, You requested some tips on one of my areas of expertise, loneliness. Lack of companionship, social pain. I work my […]
Knowing Christ the Bridegroom as a Married Woman
About eighteen months into my marriage I was assessing my spiritual life when I realized something: while I had a wonderful relationship with God the Father and was quite drawn to God the Spirit, my relationship with God the Son was hurting. As a young mom I identified with the Father and wondered if He ever felt […]
We Don’t Call Her “The Virgin Mary” For Nothing.
Whenever we talk about Mary, we address her with many different titles: Mother of Jesus, Mother of God, Holy Mary, Blessed Mother. However, out of all these, the one most often heard across Catholic (and Protestant) aisles is The Virgin Mary. Virtually every person that claims the Christian faith accepts that Mary miraculously conceived Christ […]
St. Anne Novena
I’m going to let you in on a secret. When you type words into a search engine and then click on a link, the owner of that link (blog, ecommerce site, etc.) can see the words in the search that led you to their blog. For instance here are some screen shots from the singlecatholicgirl.com search engine results. July […]
Frustrations in the Apostolate
“If you want to serve the Church, be prepared to be disappointed” said one of the heads of a local apologetics organization for which I have been volunteering for the past few years. Indeed, those of us who have worked for one apostolate or another, such as in a parish or trans-parochial group or movement, […]
“The Heresy of Action”
“Sorry, but I don’t eat meat on Friday; I’m Catholic.” How easily and glibly these words can slip out of our mouths! Is “I’m Catholic’ just another label we toss around, not much different from “I’m a [name your sports team] fan,” or “I’m a bicyclist,” or “I’m a bookworm”? All of them labels, defining us, putting aspects […]
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