Articles Under: Spiritual Formation and Prayer

During the summer after my senior year in college in 1990, I experienced a return and deepening of my faith through the intercession of our Blessed Mother. The following January, as a 23-year-old seminarian, I began attending Mass every day. Today—32 years later—I have since gone to Mass and received Holy Communion over 10,000 times. Little by little, bit by bit, these 10,000 Communions have transformed me. Only in retrospect can I appreciate how much I needed to be transformed. Today, I am still a work in progress, but the Eucharist is the center of my life, the daily event... Read more

When you began working in the Church, how many friends did you have who were also serving in ministry? For me, it was several dozen. These youth ministers, Catholic school teachers, missionaries, and seminarians all began their work with so much zeal for the mission ahead of them. Yet, nearly ten years later, I can count on one hand the number of those friends who are still involved in full-time ministry. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. Most of these friends of mine devoted several years of their lives to a university formation and tens of thousands of dollars to be... Read more

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Several years ago, I stepped into another sister’s classroom to drop something off and found her seated on a low chair near the sacred space, her students on the carpet at her feet. She had an image of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation prominently displayed, but they were talking about the bells at Mass. “The bells are like the doorbell,” she was saying. “When the doorbell rings you know someone is there to see you. When the bells ring at Mass, they tell us that God is here.” I was intrigued, and, since I had a few minutes, I sat down to... Read more