On October 14, Oscar Romero will become a saint.

One of the most powerful aspects of the Catholic Church is that it is a community. We’re known as the “community of faith,” and our liturgies and sacraments reflect that emphasis.And can I just say, it’s a good thing? Because, historically, the Church has had to contend with a great many problems, challenges, and even tragedies, difficult and trying times that no member of the community would be able to survive alone, without the support of Christian sisters and brothers....

"We will never forget." That's the phrase used most often in connection with 9/11, isn't it? We will never forget.That choice of words is not accidental: they’re words that have been used in association with other terrible times. "Remember Pearl Harbor." "Never forget the Holocaust." Even, for those who know their English history, “remember, remember, the fifth of November.” It’s as though we need words to make sure that these ho...

If you’re anything like me, you find bad habits difficult to break and positive ones tricky to establish. I think it would be a great thing to exercise more, and to stop staying up late to read “just one more chapter” in the book I have by my bed, and maybe even to stop by my parish church and spend an hour or two with the Blessed Sacrament from time to time.You can see the problem here: I said: “I think it would be a great thing.” I don’t plan it; I think abo...

There’s nothing quite like reading a terrific book, a book that makes you think, a book that opens up new ways of living a Catholic life, of relating to others, of praying and meditating. Seriously: is there? And what’s even better than finding such a book is being able to get deeper into it, to chat about it, to hear how other people reacted to it.Wouldn’t that be a great idea? A Catholic book club that introduces you to new books, that revisits old favorites, that brings you ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Who is your mother?When we answer that question, we all probably think first of our biological mothers, the women who brought us into the world, the women who packed our school lunches and helped us with homework and told us bedtime stories. But “mothering” is an activity that covers a lot of ground: there are countless women out there (and a few men, too) who have played a significant role in “mothering” us. Unfortunately, on Mother’s Day, we tend to forget them. W...