Approximately one in three American Catholics believes in the real presence. This surprising demographic prompted U.S. bishops to launch an initiative to renew their flock’s devotion to the Eucharist. The Catechism states that the Eucharist is “the source and summit...
Jane Austen’s character Fanny Price models the phrase “nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.” I remember a time in college when I called my dad for advice about managing anxiety. I felt overwhelmed by the social pressure of school and...
It happens all too often. At dinner my husband, who loves Latin, will try to share his observations from a text he’s reading—Livy, Virgil, or the Vulgate. Almost like clockwork, I’ll stop paying attention, my mind who knows where until a question: “So what do you...
Here’s a hot take: maybe death is like a tooth extraction. Okay, maybe not that hot. C.S. Lewis pioneered this analogy in The Screwtape Letters. But it’s a statement I’ve been meditating on recently because last week I underwent a wisdom tooth extraction at the...
“No duty is so underrated as the duty to be happy.” -my mom’s fridge Can you imagine waking up every morning happy? I will tell you, the only mornings I wake up happy are Saturdays. These are the only days that I wake up to a pure, unadulterated weekend, full...
Tonight, I’m having a drink. It matters because after much anxiety, I know that I’m not pregnant. But for a week, I lived in a fog of uncertainty. Would my period arrive this month? Days slipped by. As Tuesday gave way to Friday, I tried to resign myself to the idea...
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of interviewing Brie Sanford, an alumna of Catholic Marriage Prep. We discussed baseball, high school, and avoidable wedding mistakes, but even more importantly I heard the story of her faith journey, long-distance engagement, and...
People often ask me what I remember best from my wedding. I could reply with the predictable answers, like walking down the aisle, exchanging consent before the altar, or dancing at the wedding reception: all vivid memories of some of the most important moments of my...
I needed a wake-up call on what it means to "love your neighbor." My husband and I live in an apartment, our very first. We’ve only been here two months, but already I would say that we have lived through the gamut of classic apartment stereotypes: the...
Many people in our culture believe in love at first sight. I’ll never forget the first time I asked my mom to explain how she knew that she would marry my dad. She smiled serenely. “Oh,” she said, “I just knew.” How, I wondered, could this be possible? Ten years old...