Embracing our common call to holiness
Last week on Catholic Mom I wrote about the biblical concept of first fruits, and how we can apply that to our modern lives. In the Bible in a Year podcast, Fr. Mike Schmitz observes that often we are giving God whatever is left in our days. Energetic scraps, if you will. How can we […]
So many families seem to have it all together for Advent, don’t they? Christmas trees acquired and beautifully decorated; Advent wreaths lit while small children sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel;” devotionals read while sipping a cup of hot coffee. Advent is planned, done and dusted, and now they just get to sit back and […]
American Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday for me, and many others, as a Native American. Some Native families celebrate it while others do not. It is an annual reminder of the painful past between indigenous people and the Europeans who later came to inhabit their lands. My family has always celebrated Thanksgiving, but I was […]
Hallowtide is upon us, and I, for one, am practically vibrating with excitement. What is Hallowtide, you ask? It’s the ancient Christian custom of praying for the dead and celebrating the countless (named and unnamed) saints in Heaven over the course of three days: All Hallows Eve (aka Halloween), All Saints Day, and All Souls […]
My family is Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk), one of the six tribes that form the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy that stretches primarily between the northeastern United States and Canada. Native Americans make up 1% of the population of American Catholics, so you may not have encountered many (or any) of us. Americans tend to think that Native people […]
My journey towards joining the Secular Franciscan Order started out with a bang courtesy of the Holy Spirit (a story for another day). From that point onward I knew deep in my heart that I was meant to be spending time with a local Secular Franciscan fraternity, and that I very likely had a vocation […]
My childhood church featured beautiful, full-length stained glass windows. My family typically sat in the same area each week, and I grew to know the windows within view. The saints depicted in them became old friends I looked forward to seeing each week. One window was a particular source of fascination for me, and it […]
I longed to be a nun as a child. I was precocious and pious, and pictured religious life as it was depicted in The Sound of Music or Sister Act movies. I could pray and make rosaries all day? Sign me up! As I got older (and saw that I was called to the vocation […]
I love a fresh start. Each year I find many occasions that lend themselves to this feeling of “everything is new again!” such as the New Year in January and the start of a new school year in September. In December 2020 I was ready and eager for 2021, when I happened to spy a […]
