grace

  • Amazing Grace – Raised Catholic episode 17

    The following is a transcript from the Raised Catholic podcast. To listen to the podcast, click here. Today is episode 17: Amazing Grace When you think of the word ‘grace’, what comes to your mind?  Is it the prayer you say around a table before you eat a meal?  The period of time before the late fees…

  • Fire

    There was a fire in my church.  Thankfully there wasn’t a lot of destruction, but the smoke damage remediation will take several weeks and so we’ve been unable to have mass.  It brings me back to the catastrophic fire which took place at Notre Dame in Paris almost one year ago and how the devastation…

  • Raise

    Raise

    In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to…

  • John

    John

    Today at mass, we heard the story of the birth of John the Baptist, and it’s a story we’ve heard many times before. John’s parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah, are told they will be parents in their old age, and while Elizabeth believes, Zechariah laughs. Immediately, Zechariah loses his voice, and he remains without speech for…

  • Spring

    Spring

    If you live where I live, you’re seeing everything in bloom.   In my tiny yard alone: forsythia, tulips, hosta, dogwood, phlox, azalea, and even dandelions. In my neighborhood, baby leaves are peeping out and growing more with each day, making a welcome canopy of sunlit apple green overhead. And everyone is smiling: all of this…

  • Oil

    Oil

    I knelt down to pray before lunch, which is a relatively new thing I’m doing, and I made sure to thank God for graces given before asking Him for more stuff (this is also new), and as I prayed there on my kitchen floor, I felt a whisper in my heart. It said: Grace is…

  • Vision

    Vision

    In hopeful, clear moments, I see that the Lord is actually in this place, in what can seem to me like desert. And sometimes I’m sleeping on stone.

  • Waiting

    I don’t like waiting. Waiting for something important feels, for me, like a racing heart and a pit in my stomach and like my small voice echoing in a canyon: I AM ALONE. In the season in which I waited to get pregnant with Brian, I agonized and strived and pleaded with God. Two years…

  • Outer Banks

    In the long, snowy, record-breaking Winter that led up to our Outer Banks vacation, I would often imagine myself on the beach in April. I thought, if I can just make it through the cold and snow, I’ll be rewarded there. I imagined myself flat on my back in what I hoped would be hot…