If you’re like a lot of Catholics, you know that the Bible is important for our faith. But where do you start? What passages should you be looking at? How should you read through certain books as opposed to others?
Too often, we put up a half-hearted struggle. Oh, we might look quite good on the outside, but are we really making progress? Or are we just going through it all out of a sense of routine?
Anyone who makes a serious effort to engage in prayer will almost certainly find themselves struggling with distractions. Sometimes distractions come from outside ourselves (e.g., a ringing cell phone or some chatty fellow parishioners). Other times, our minds are restless, or we’re assaulted by interior temptations.
With the arrival of September, we’re ready to resume our twice weekly posting schedule with a series on cultivating a deeper prayer life. Readers offered some great ideas for articles in this series. Some suggested topics include…
What struck me about this passage is the Israelites’ lack of courage. It’s not that God wasn’t willing to work with them. The problem was He couldn’t.
The man finds the treasure by accident, as some people find God. The merchant, however, undertakes a long, deliberate quest, as most of us likely do with our Faith.
Rather than talking about the treasure, Father focused on the field. Imagine you want to buy it. What a hassle! Who owns the field? Will they sell it to you? At what price?
Veronica was extremely devout from a young age. But, as Dawn pointed out, it can be aggravating living with a saint. Such was the case with Veronica.
Do you struggle with sharing the Faith with others? I do. Thankfully, a priest I know addressed this issue in a homily. He outlined a simple process for dialoguing with people about the Faith. Here it is.
Throughout July, we’ve delved into the lives of a variety of saints from all different walks of life. Each one of them was entrusted with a mission. All of these men and women were needed. So are you.
I remember listening to one older friend of mine talking about his grownup children. Though they’ve fallen away from the Faith, he described them as “good people.”
When we read accounts of the saints, a lot of them might strike us as “sugar and spice and everything nice.” Not St. Elizabeth of the Trinity! The elder of two daughters, she was an energetic, strong-willed girl given to temper tantrums.
Never in the history of the Catholic Church has there been a canonized American-born martyr to the faith. The fact that he has been beatified, and his case for canonization is being examined, is cause for great excitement among American Catholics and demands that his story be told again.
Raphael is a major figure in the Book of Tobit, rendering immeasurable help to Tobit and his son Tobiah. Though a great archangel, he can instruct and aid us in many ways.
Imagine that the United States has gone to war with Canada and that the war has raged for more than eight decades. The war has been so brutal that the central government in the United States has vanished.