This Sunday marks the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.Pope Francis delivered his message for 2018’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees back last summer. I didn’t notice the announcement; the news cycles were filled with other pressing stories, many of them frightening enough to claim all my attention. And I honestly didn’t realize that the Church has been observing this day since 1914.Most of the time, in the face of all the needs in the world today, I feel overwhelmed....

We all make them. “This year I’m going to lose weight… get a new job… save some money… be kinder…” And sometimes those resolutions actually take off. You join the gym. You open the savings account. But we all know what happens next: the pressure of adding so many obligations onto our already-overscheduled lives makes breaking those resolutions the first and easiest thing to do in January.Instead of making and breaking resolutions this year, here&rsqu...

I almost broke my tooth on it.It was the evening of Twelfth Night, the end of the Christmas season, and my parish church was celebrating as many churches and families do in France, with a galette des rois—what might be translated as a King’s Cake.We don’t just sit down and eat this cake, mind you. There’s an age-old protocol that needs to be followed having to do with the little charm that bakers hide inside the cake. The youngest child present must hide under the table a...

Imagine if God granted you visions… and then nobody believed that you had them!That was what happened to a French nun in the 1600s. Margaret Mary (Marguerite-Marie) Alacoque had promised herself to Jesus when she was a child, but she set aside this promise as a young woman in order to participate in social life. Jesus appeared to her again one night as she returned late from Carnival, reproaching her for forgetting him, and so she entered the local Visitation convent.She had a series...