Hey it’s Michaelmas. Which means you can totally get away with ordering chicken wings for dinner and calling yourself a liturgical boss. (Just don’t skip on the diablo hot sauce.) This past week felt so heavy in the news. I mentioned on Facebook on Tuesday that I’ve started taking Saturdays,…
September 29, 2017My spiritual director (who is probably off somewhere directing an 8 day Ignatian retreat right now) will probably cringe at this attempt to condense the richness of Ignatian spirituality to a blog post, but then again, he probably isn’t reading. St. Ignatius is a household favorite thanks to CCC’s “Francis…
July 31, 2017(By Franciscan I’m referring to Franciscan University of Steubenville and not the venerable religious order, about which I know less.) It looks a little like the Benedict Option, actually. Could also probably be called “The FOCUS option” or “The Christendom Option” or “The TAC option.” But, in reading the endless criticisms and…
May 8, 2017On this feast of St. Joseph the worker, I wanted to feature something written by another Joseph, a friend and father whom I admire greatly. He shepherds his growing little flock on the domestic front, and he also helps keep our streets safe in his heroic line of duty. St. Joseph,…
May 1, 2017Today Lent is over, but Easter has not yet arrived. We enter into the Triduum, the holiest part of the Christian year, the 3 day climax of the liturgical season that bridges the impossible gap between Lent and Easter, between humanity and divinity. I am ill prepared. Oh, the ingredients…
April 13, 2017…And we’ll see you in the New Year! Some of my favorite Christmas carols (and one surprising modern addition) for a blessed Christmas weekend to you and yours. May the peace of the newborn Jesus, frail and cold and surprisingly, astoundingly one of us, wedded to humanity, wrapped in Mary’s…
December 24, 2016And I do mean simple. In years past I’ve delved deep into the Church’s liturgical traditions and a mish mash of my own childhood to begin piecing together what our little family’s observation of the season would look like. Last year I even hosted an Advent series detailing other families’ traditions.…
November 27, 2016The other Friday night I helped shovel lackluster chicken nuggets (GF so no surprise there) and carrot sticks into the mouths of my young before we jumped in the car to head downtown, fighting wrong way rush hour traffic into the city. (I don’t know what constitutes a good Friday night for you,…
October 18, 2016Today is Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael, the archangel, and actually of the rest of the archangels, too. I’m not building my kids a satan piñata to smash or baking anything with blackberries, but those are both tradition things that people do, and sound cool. Probably we’ll pray the…
September 29, 2016It’s that confusing time of summer where the temperatures are still hitting triple digits some days, but the big box stores are rolling out mega packs of white socks, pencils, and $.25 cent bottles of glue amidst the s’more’s displays and fireworks stands. While the kids are still mostly swimsuit…
August 1, 2016