Are There Miracles Today?

Each year a team of medical professionals from my parish, St. Dominic, spend a week in a poor village in El Salvador screening and treating more than 1,000 patients. On their visit last month, to their dismay there was only enough lidocaine for local anesthesia for five or six patients. However, each time the doctors […]

Infusing Faith in Little Children

Providentially, I received my newest book, The Heartbeat of Faith: 59 Poems, Fingerplays, and Prayers, on my birthday. I wrote this book because a teacher at a workshop I gave commented how useful she found my poem about etiquette in church. Strangely I didn’t even remember writing it! If this poem was a help to […]

Just Who Are the Laborers?

Jesus’ exhortation in Sunday’s Gospel “ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” usually is interpreted to mean pray for more priests, deacons, and women and men religious. But look at the context of his words. Jesus is sending out seventy-two disciples. None of these followers are priests or consecrated […]

Your Choice

As of today, I have written 217 posts for this blog. This week I am on vacation, and so I invite you to select any of my previous posts to mull over. I’ll be back next week, God willing!

Are You Blind or Like Bartmaeus?

Here is a guest blog from my friend Amanda Haberman:  My Great-Uncle Jim was legally blind and still driving his car weekly well into his 80s. This was comical to me as a teenager, but I’m sure it was alarming and dangerous in the eyes of my parents and probably his neighbors. While Uncle Jim […]

Spotlight on the Family: The Domestic Church 1

Where did you learn the Hail Mary? the story of Christmas? to go to Mass? that you should share your toys with others? that hitting someone is wrong? Undoubtedly, in your family. In view of the focus on the family this month in the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia and in the upcoming Synod […]

Evangelizing: Mary, Me, and My Family

Before Mary’s month of May ends, I thought I’d better put up at least one post devoted to her. Let’s focus on Mary as an evangelizer, someone who proclaimed the Gospel, the good news of the Savior. Mary was actually the first one evangelized. She was the first to hear the news and from the […]