“Lord, your poor little girl, your poor image is here before you, yearning for you with all the strength of her being.”The woman writing these words in 1945 was named Gabrielle Bossis. She wasn’t, in fact, a little girl: she was 71 years old. But that image, the image of a child coming—in trust and love—to listen to the words that would eventually become the spiritual classic He and I, is indicative of the heart and soul of this mystic who discerned and followed the...

I mean that literally. We know a couple of the Church’s liturgical seasons well—Lent and Advent come to mind right away. But what happened to Christmas?The truth is that it’s easy to make Advent into a sort of almost-Christmas season. There are gifts to purchase and wrap. There are carols and Christmas parties and Santas all over the place. Christmas trees and lights go up a month ahead of Christmas Day. So by the time Christmas Day actually arrives, it finds everyone a little ...

For St. John of the Cross, the mystical path meant living with an all-consuming desire to know and love God, completely and fully, abandoning everything that didn’t move him toward that goal.He believed that God illuminates the individual—who, because of that illumination, then has the desire and power to shed the illusions of this world. These illusions include the messages of the senses, which distort the reality of union with God.In his poem Dark Night, St. John of the Cross extol...

“Everything is a grace.” St Therese of the Child Jesus“In all things, God works everything out for the good.” St PaulI can't keep myself from thinking over the past twelve months since Thanksgiving last. There is much to be grateful for. Too much it seems. But there is also the cousin that so many family and friends rallied around as she checked off her bucket list in the last months of her life. A brave, strong and dear woman who held the fragility of her life w...

By Fr. EvansOver the past century or so we’ve seen significant changes in the way saints’ life stories are offered to the reading public. It’s not been too surprising to find emphasis placed on what made saints extraordinary while they were on earth—and thus different from most other people. So, many saints are portrayed as exhibiting some or all of these attributes: signs of God’s favor at birth, precocious holiness in childhood, early and consistent renunciation o...

Who was she?St. Thérèse of Lisieux, popularly known as the “Little Flower,” was a French Discalced Carmelite nun popular in modern times because of the simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, and having spent her last 18 months in Carmel in a night of faith, she died of tuberculosis when she was 24.What was she struggling with?Her health had never been good: she suffered from scruples (a religiously o...

St. Francis de SalesWho was he?St. Francis de Sales was a Bishop of Geneva noted for his deep faith and his gentle approach to the religious divisions in his land resulting from the Protestant Reformation. He is known also for his writings on the topic of spiritual direction and spiritual formation, particularly the Introduction to the Devout Life and the Treatise on the Love of God.What was he struggling with?St. Francis de Sales struggled daily with a fiery temper and intense impatience. By hi...

Most world religions are about humanity reaching for God; Christianity is about God reaching for humanity, and doing it through his Son.by Jeannette de BeauvoirI had been living in the United States for a few months and was dreadfully unhappy, terribly homesick for France. I was attending college, and in a fit of what can only be called pique I decided to spend my spring break away from everyone. I rented a tent and went off to a campground in New Hampshire that was, at that time of year, virtua...

If you’re like many families, in October you feel like you’re still recovering from the mania of getting your kids back to school: re-establishing schedules (“no, you can’t stay up until eleven o’clock”), sorting activities (“how am I ever going to get Jamie to ballet class and Alyssa to her trumpet lesson at the same time?”), and policing homework (“if you’ve really finished, show it to me.”). Halloween is a blip on the calendar,...

Many parents and educators don’t look at comic books and graphic novels as “real” literature. There’s a reluctance to see anything as a real book when it contains fewer words and more pictures. But there are a lot of good reasons for your children and students to read them—and those reasons can hold true for adults, as well!The best way to think about a graphic novel is that it is a format, not a genre, with a far longer and richer history in countries like Japan (m...