Lessons from Hallmark I taught religion to the whole middle school, from sixth to eighth grades. I was also the homeroom teacher to the sixth-grade boys for most of the years I taught there. I was always on the lookout for anything I could use for my boys or for teaching in general. One evening at the convent, we watched a Hallmark movie, and I walked away with a one-line golden nugget that the Holy Spirit told me to write down for my boys: “A boy with courage grows up to be a man with courage . ” I wrote... Read more
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Articles Under: Personal Witness Stories
My husband and I met George a few years ago through Marriage Encounter. He was a navy pilot. W hile his wife was Catholic, George was not religious. We were George and his wife’s prayer couple during their weekend. We kept a candle lit for them the entire weekend and we prayed for them in various ways. During our prayers Saturday afternoon, something happened that had never happened before. The candle’s flame kept flickering and gradually grew weaker. My husband and I wondered what this could have meant. Thinking that the couple might be struggling in their relationship, we decided... Read more
For Communion Growing up Protestant, sacraments seemed fairly irrelevant to me. It was not until I turned fifteen that I decided to get baptized because I knew that if I accepted the te rms of what baptism meant, by Protestant standards, then I needed to truly accept Christ and all that it meant to follow him. As a Methodist, I alway s wanted to be in the right mindset for communion and not take for granted what I was partaking in. When I met my husband, I recognized that his Catholic beliefs were particularly important to him. As he explained... Read more
Several years ago, I was working as a parish Coordinator of Youth Ministry, and one of my responsibilities was teaching a high school religious education class. The class was arranged by the parish DRE and met as part of her programming each Wednesday night. There was no set textbook or program. We had a wide range of topics and materials available, and we were able to move as the class needed. The class was comprised of a diverse range of students with varying backgrounds and levels of catechetical formation. Mid-year, a new family moved to the parish. The parents only... Read more
The Lord’s Relentless Pursuit after My Own Heart I was born and raised Catholic, with a family who went to Church every week. I also went to Catholic schools, so the faith was constantly around me. Yet, growing up, I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be popular, I wanted people to talk about me like they talked about the other girls. And all my life, I always felt like I was going to have to try harder to get people to like me because I wasn’t pretty like the other girls. I got teased a lot for... Read more
A cascade of trees flowed down the hillside towards the water, a body of water that was bigger than a pond but not quite a lake, on the lands belonging to the Holy Ghost Fathers in southern Connecticut. In England it might be called a mere, but in my childhood, we neither knew nor cared about things like that: for us it was simply boys’ paradise, especially in winter. The Holy Ghost Fathers never bothered us, nor ran us off—in fact, I cannot recall ever seeing them. Perhaps the mere was too far from the main house, or perhaps they... Read more
The work of catechesis, like any aspect of the Christian life, calls for great trust. In fact, Bishop Robert Barron’s book And Now I See speaks of the process of metanoia (conversion), signifying an internal shift to a mind governed by trust in God rather than fear. Personally, this resonates a great deal. My teaching career commenced on turbulent waters. My experiences as a student teacher achieved precisely the opposite of what was intended. Instead of brimming with the energy and enthusiasm of a recent graduate, I emerged with my teaching confidence in absolute tatters, laden with self-doubt and fear... Read more
Letting the Holy Spirit Answer Whenever I’m about to make a big decision, I always jokingly remind my friends “It’s my job to knock on all the doors; it’s God’s job to open one.” All my life, I have found this to be true. God allows me to run around pursuing opportunities, and then he simply opens the right door. The beauty of the workings of God in our lives is that he knows us so well. God knows me better than I know myself; he knows what I need to become the saint he created me to be. Yet... Read more
I walked along the forbidden streets of one of Philadelphia’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods while being greeted respectfully by neighbors. They knew I lived at the church and, despite countless warnings about the safety of this community, I encountered only joyful faces. One of the first conversations I had as I walked from the El station to the church rectory, where I lived with other young adults, was with a seven-year-old girl, who asked me: “Is God a father and Mary a mother?” Yes, Mary is a mother, and she is the mother of all of us; she is Comforter of... Read more
Grace-Filled Broken Hearts This past fall, my middle school students and I (along with the whole school and parish) experienced a heart-wrenching situation. Our pastor was removed from our parish and stripped of his priestly duties due to the revelation of sexual improprieties he had engaged in early in his priestly ministry. I will speak with as much charity as I can muster. We all constantly made excuses for the awkward way this priest conducted himself. He always looked unkempt, regularly arrived late for Mass, treated students (especially altar servers) with an inappropriate level of brusqueness, and introduced “cringey” topics... Read more
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