Life Challenges

“ where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” Romans 5:20

God’s love and mercy knows no bounds. He invites us to come frequently to the Sacrament of Confession to be healed and strengthened. Check out these resources for making a good confession.

Reprinted with Permission, Catholic Education Resource Center

And when we stop praying, that's when things begin to go wrong.

You and I were created for prayer. Life is about learning how to pray. If the very purpose of human life is to know God and love God in eternity, then the purpose of life is prayer.

And the more we pray, the happier we become. The more we pray, the less anxious we become, and we are filled with a greater peace of mind and heart. The more we pray, the more we understand ourselves, for we come to know God more intimately, by experience and we really only know ourselves to the degree that we know God personally. The more we pray, we begin to see the hand of God in our day to day life, that is, we see Him acting in our life. We begin to see that He loves us, personally. That makes life so much more meaningful.

So much to teach our children, and so quickly the years go by. As a parent, the responsibility can at times feel overwhelming. The math, the reading, the sports and activities all contribute to the development of our children and have value and importance. But there is that One thing or more precisely the One Person that supersedes all other lessons in value.

No one else can do your part in God’s Divine plan. You were born for this day. You were born for this time.

Helpful and timely advice for you and your loved ones.

Allison Ricciardi is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in New York, in practice since 1990. In 2001 Allison founded CatholicTherapists.com, the web’s #1 resource connecting Catholics with faithful Catholic therapists. She is also the director of The Raphael Remedy which offers counseling, coaching and wellness support from an authentically Catholic perspective.

These are unprecedented times. We are praying for all families. We trust that the Lord will sustain us and draw our families closer to him and one another. The Lord reminds us . . .

“A three-ply cord is not easily broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:12

We trust that the Lord will sustain our families and draw us closer to him and to one another.

Never before have we experienced a Lent or Holy Week like this. We may be separated as a community but spiritually we can be very powerfully connected through prayer and observance of Holy Week in our homes. The Lord knows our sacrifices, our sorrows and our fears. He knows our hopes and our joys. Let us gather as a community and offer our prayers and sacrifices from wherever we are at. We are united in the Lord.

“It is love alone that gives worth to all things. “

St Teresa of Avila

Our culture has lost sight of the beauty and profundity of marriage as God intended. As Catholics we have the opportunity to witness and protect this sacrament instituted by Christ.

We invite you to celebrate and strengthen your bond of marriage as we observe National Marriage Week in the USA.

As a Church family, we’re witnesses to the beauty of life, even in the midst of life’s messiness: caring for sick family members, puzzling over our family budget, rushing to get to hockey practice, shushing our toddlers at Mass. (Go on, admit it - I’ve done my share of shushing.) God calls us to affirm life’s goodness in the midst of a skeptical culture. That sounds tough to do, when the skepticism takes the form of seeing abortion as a “right.”

We can do it.

Let’s talk about Hallowtide, shall we? All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween), All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2) make up what is traditionally called Hallowtide.

Don't worry about how "well" you pray the Rosary. Just pray it. As with anything new, you may stumble at first but it will soon become natural and you'll begin to miss it if you skip it! Give the Rosary a try and pray one decade today!

Exemplary Mother of the Great Augustine,

you perseveringly pursued your wayward son,

not with wild threats but with prayerful cries to heaven.

Intercede for all mothers in our day

so that they may learn to draw their children to God.

A Catholic who seeks inner healing is similar to the traveler on a journey.The Holy Spirit helps him to become aware of his heart wound and mercifully sets him on the road of encounter with Jesus. The healing journey is comparable to the situation of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

We need all the help we can get in parenting in this digital culture. Please check out the many resources we have for educating, safeguarding and healing for families in this age of social media and internet accessibility.

For the past six months I have spoken with many parents, young people, and couples about the dangers of the internet and technology. More directly, I have been speaking to them about the danger of internet pornography. Pornography poses a grave threat to individuals, couples and families, and society.

“Maternity is a natural eucharist...The mother says to her child: “As I live because of Christ, so you will live because of me.”

Motherhood, a natural eucharist. This, the reality of pregnancy, the reality of motherhood, the reality of bringing a baby into the world...a woman says to the life that comes from within her, “This is my body, given up for you.”

By Robert Royal

FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2019 

Today’s 46th March for Life in Washington is not a Catholic thing. It’s been gratifying over the years to see the growing numbers of Evangelicals, mainstream Protestants, Jews – you gotta love the blowing of the shofar from the stage just before marchers set out – Mormons, Muslims, and others. All of whom have come to realize that killing the smallest and most vulnerable of our human kind is not humane, and no favor to women,

We’re angry because this  is sin, and sin always hurts people.

Now maybe once again we can understand why God hates sin. He doesn’t hate sin because he’s big and nasty and judgmental. He hates sin because it breaks hearts, breaks lives, breaks families, breaks the church and breaks true love.

So bring on the righteous anger, and let’s think again about sin and why its wrong.

Today marks exactly half a century since the publication of Humanae vitae, Bl. Paul VI’s prescient missive to the Church in response to the modern world’s views on sexuality and the human person. Reading it now through the warped lens of the 21st century’s concept of sex, it seems extraordinary that there was once a time the world was not arguing over the existence of multiple choice genders and contraception as a fundamental human right.

Progress, eh?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s deeply controversial encyclical letter “Humanae vitae.” But I would like to draw particular attention to a remarkable passage in this encyclical, namely section 17, in which Paul VI plays the prophet and lays out, clearly and succinctly, what he foresees as consequences of turning away from the Church’s classic teaching on sex.

I have a friend who once told me that, at one point in her life, she suffered from severe anxiety, indigestion, and insomnia.

“Then,” she said, “I made a single change in my life that cured all of that. What was it? I quit leading youth ministry at church.”

....Christ came to earth and died on the cross, not so that we could avoid death and suffering, but so that he could transform the inevitability of death and suffering from the inside out. By communion with him, by participation in his cross, we could receive eternal life. 

Fr. Mike Schmitz, in this 6 min. video, talks on suffering as sharing in a "sliver of the cross".

How many times as a parent have we wished that we could alleviate our child’s suffering? Our
God-given nature to love and protect our child kicks in to high gear when he or she faces trials.