Welcome to the Online Lenten Book Club!During these six weeks of Lent, we are reading and reflecting on the classic on prayer, Pray To Your Father in Secret by Jean Lafrance. For more information about the book club, visit this blog post. Week 4, Chapter 3 - The Working Out of SalvationWe read Scripture to integrate Christ’s life into our own lives, not just to hear his story. Everything we do—reading, praying, working—is to become one with Christ. We don&rs...

Welcome to Week 3 of the Online Lenten Book Club!During these six weeks of Lent, we are reading and reflecting on the classic on prayer, Pray To Your Father in Secret by Jean Lafrance. For more information about the book club, visit this blog post. Week 3, Chapter 2 - The Way of SalvationThe world changed when God sent his son to become part of it; we have, in the process, become part of God, and he of us. We need to focus, daily, on a constant awareness of that presence.Our ...

There is little doubt that one of our newest books, Brigid and the Butter, is based on folklore about St. Brigid of Ireland rather than on fact. Does that make it any less compelling for children to read? Our tradition says no: Jesus himself used parables (stories) to illustrate what he was talking about, and folklore (stories) often tells us more about who we are than any law or date can ever do. The farther back in time we go, the less we tend to know about people. Sometimes no one writes...

If there is one theme that many of the saints return to again and again, it’s this: the absolute requirement that we have as Christians is to see Christ in everyone, to see God’s hand in everything. The Gospels tell us, Pope Francis tells us, Mother Teresa tells us…and, in the early part of the 20th century, an Englishwoman named Caryll Houselander told us, as well, in words that still resonate today: There are many people in the world who cultivate a curious state which ...

Inner peace. It’s what everyone is looking for, isn’t it? It has to be: there are hundreds of self-help books flooding the marketplace, each of them claiming to give readers the path to inner contentment. DVDs walk us through mindfulness meditations, herbal “remedies” claim to calm our anxieties, yoga classes urge us to breathe deeply and discover our inner self.And yet something isn’t working. Everyone is still waiting for the next book, the next video, the next cl...

Welcome to the Online Lenten Book Club!During these six weeks of Lent, we are reading and reflecting on the classic on prayer, Pray To Your Father in Secret by Jean Lafrance. For more information about the book club, visit this blog post. Week 2, Section 1 - The God of DialogueFr. Lafrance urges us to walk in the steps of God’s people in Scripture. As Moses discovered, God isn’t accessible through our minds: he is mystery. Moses, Elijah, and the psalmist all knew ...

There is perhaps only one thing that people of all nations, all political parties, all beliefs, and all races can agree upon: the world is in turmoil. The planet may have already suffered irreversible damage. The situation in Syria is perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis of all time. The United States is so politically polarized that family members cannot speak civilly with each other. Children go to bed hungry, and people pass the homeless on the street with no more than a cursory glance. ...

Week 1 of the weekly guide to the "Pray To Your Father in Secret" Lenten Book Club: Preface.

Humanity has been trying to learn how to pray from the earliest times. In fact, almost every single book in the Bible mentions the word prayer or expresses a prayer, making close to 1,200 distinct references to praying. Our most important prayer, the Our Father, was given to us by Jesus himself in response to the disciples’ plea for help praying. And St. Paul exhorts us to devote ourselves to prayer and to pray without ceasing.We are in a difficult position, it would seem. We yearn to reac...

There’s always been a special place in the Catholic Church for the keeping of spiritual journals. Some of our most beloved saints, including St. Therese of Lisieux (her journal was published as The Story of a Soul) and St. Ignatius Loyola (whose journal became the Spiritual Exercises), kept spiritual journals.Closer to our own time, Pope John XXIII kept a personal journal from when he was a teenager until he died, and Pope John Paul II’s personal notes are also soon to be published i...