Today we celebrate the feast of St. Charbel, someone many Catholics have never heard of. Joseph Makhloof was born at Beqa-Kafra in the mountains of Lebanon in 1828; he entered the Lebanese Maronite monastery of Notre-Dame de Mayfouk when he was 23 and took the name Charbel.We’re not the first generation to have forgotten St. Charbel. Thomas Merton wrote that “Charbel lived as a hermit in Lebanon—he was a Maronite. He died. Everyone forgot about him. Fifty years later, his body ...

You are busy. Life happens. You can barely keep up. You know that you could be thinking about more important things, but you don't have the time to stop and consider what they would be, much less do them.And then something happens. You are stopped in your tracks. A spouse leaves. A friend dies. A job is lost. Opportunities pass you by. A child makes decisions that break your heart. As you absorb the pain of what is happening, the important things begin to surface. What was hidden, suddenly s...

I’m one of those people who, for a long time, claimed to love G. K. Chesterton without ever having read anything he wrote. I liked the idea of him, and since I was a theology major I pretended to know all about him when he came up in conversation. But it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I decided to stop posing and actually pick up one of his books.I reluctantly borrowed Orthodoxy from my dad, expecting to be bored out of my mind. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Aft...

Did you grow up saying prayers to Our Lady at bedtime? Is there a special image or icon of the Mother of God that is dear to you? And did you then become an adult with a special devotion to Mary?If this sounds like you, then you’ve probably spent the last couple of years wondering how to renew our understanding of Our Lady’s role in the Church today in giving Jesus to the world, especially in the light of the New Evangelization. It’s normal to be perplexed: the 21st century so ...

Isn’t it an amazing feeling when you read a book or an article and feel that the author has really captured your own thoughts about something? When you find yourself nodding along as you read? When you read words written before you were born and feel that the writer really “got it”? That’s how I feel reading G.K. Chesterton.This was a man of great appetites: intellectual, spiritual, and physical. He weighed upward of 300 pounds, and “liked his beer and Burgundy.&rdq...

"To consecrate oneself to Mary is not a passing fashion, a spiritual hobby, but a ready response to the gift of the dying Jesus: “Here is your mother” (Jn 19:27). We don’t need to distrust the gifts of God, for he knows what we need before we even ask him (see Mt 6:8). Perhaps no one has seen this act of Jesus in a theological and symbolic framework as well as Saint Louis de Montfort. For this great French apostle, baptized persons must cast themselves like raw clay into t...

Getting older, we discover, is not for the faint of heart.It’s not just our physical bodies that are betraying us with aches and pains; it’s the whole process of changing expectations for the future and looking back to a past we cannot change. Neither of these activities is pleasant or easy.And we don’t have much choice in the matter. As we move from our forties into our fifties and beyond, the nights we spend staring at the ceiling in the dark become more frequent, and often m...

In old English, and in some traditions today, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Holy Ghost. But it’s not exactly what we imagine when we think of ghosts today! Most of us have a pretty good idea of what ghosts are “supposed” to look like—and heaven forbid they should chase us!But the Holy Spirit? That might be something else altogether.The Holy Spirit is God working in us. When you feel afraid and are in prayer and experience a sudden wave of reassurance, that’s...

It’s a perennial question. Let’s face it, shopping for Mom is a lot easier: scarves, jewelry, items for the kitchen, the list is endless. But there are just so many ties that Dad can fit into his closet!We have a few suggestions to help this year. Instead of that ubiquitous tie, why not get something special that Dad will treasure, that will improve his life, that he’ll return to again and again?Two great books are available to help Dad get his life organized and on track: When...

Being a father is difficult. You’re supposed to do everything: earn a good living, fix everything that breaks around the house, help with homework, have a close relationship with your kids… and still see mothers get most of the props for parenting!It’s difficult to find the time to be the kind of father you’d like to be, but there are things you can do to make it clearer, if not easier! Here are five ways you can increase your interactions with your kids and enrich both ...