Category: Feature

If you have ever been teased or bullied, you know the power that words have to build up or destroy. My family moved to the Detroit suburbs when I was in the middle of seventh grade. I left a Catholic...

About five years ago, I volunteered to direct our parish children’s choir. The previous director had moved from the parish and I could see how much it pained our music director to lose this ministry. So, with nothing more than...

After the simplicity and austerity of Lent, the 50 days of Easter can seem like an avalanche of sacramental and devotional gifts. About seven or eight years ago, my husband and I arrived at Church 30 minutes before Mass to...

Pope Francis reminds us that the accompaniment aspect of becoming a disciple offers us a chance to be truly present to others, especially to those who are struggling. —Living as Missionary Disciples Accompaniment is one of the four steps in...

When I was a young teenager, I spent a lot of time riding around the neighborhood on my bike or walking in the fields while asking that age-old question: “What do I want to do with my life?” As for...

We spend so much time and energy on the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that we are often spiritually exhausted by the time the last “Alleluia!” rings out on Easter Sunday. After the Easter chocolate has been unwrapped...

A few weeks ago, we watched a CBS 60 Minutes Presents segment about a project run by the USC Shoah Foundation. They record intensely detailed interviews with Holocaust survivors; using artificial intelligence, they are then able to use these interviews...

My family has a tradition of creating collages of items that ground or inspire us—pictures, quotes, and various other odds and ends. I’ve created such collections at home and at work. They serve as a sort of public declaration, proclaiming,...

During my junior year of college, I decided to take a semester of ballet. Though I was a Notre Dame student, I was a theatre major and, during the 1980s, most of the theatre courses were held at Saint Mary’s...

In the late 1980s, I traded in my computer for a chalkboard, swapped advertising clients for high school students, and became a religion teacher. Within a few weeks of my first day at that all-girls Catholic high school, we had...