My first surprise for 2015 was not pleasant: I spent the first few days of January sick in bed!Right after Christmas, I caught a bad flu and just as I thought I was getting well, a relapse totally knocked me down on New Year’s Eve. (I’m feeling much better now, thanks to the TLC of several sisters, lots of bed rest and a surprising amount of cold medicine.)  My second surprise of the new year was much more pleasant: the time I needed to spend in bed has proven to be unexpectedly fruitful! Bein...

There's something about New Year's that inspires hope in me. Every year, during those first seven of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I find myself actively and enthusastically contemplating the start of a new year. No matter how tattered (or forgotten) last year's resolutions are, I am confident that this year will be different. Maybe it's the glow from the Christmas lights, but snarky and cynical shadows of how well last year's resolutions went don't have a chance. It's a New Year, and in some wa...

Way back in 1959, St. Paul Editions, as our publishing house was then called, compiled and printed a marvelous book: the Queen of Apostles Manual of Prayer. It wasn’t just another prayer book—at that time there were hundreds of those on the market—but literally a manual, a how-to, of conversation with God, learned by…praying. It was reprinted and revised more than once. By the time it received a new title, Queen of Apostles Prayer Book, it contained over 400 prayers and novenas. At least tha...