Come Back to Me with All Your Heart

"The fast of Lent has no advantage to us unless it brings about our spiritual renewal. It is necessary while fasting to change our whole life and practice virtue. Turning away from all wickedness means keeping our tongue in check, restraining our anger,

“ 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.

Are you ready for Lent? Check out our Lenten resources!

"The fast of Lent has no advantage to us unless it brings about our spiritual renewal. It is necessary while fasting to change our whole life and practice virtue. Turning away from all wickedness means keeping our tongue in check, restraining our anger,

“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.

God is here. Now. In this moment. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Indeed, if he ceased to be present, we would cease to exist. How rarely we feel or experience this truth! Yet, holy men like Jean-Pierre de Caussade or Brother Lawrence, who both wrote wonderful books about finding God in the present moment, tell us with full conviction that we can learn to do so. How? We must train ourselves to see and perceive God’s presence.

“If He asks much of you, it is because He knows you can give much.” St. John Paul II

How appropriate this proclamation by St. John Paul II for Sunday, May 12, 2019 as we commemorate mothers and also observe World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Vocation, be it marriage and family or religious life, while calling us to heroic sacrifice also brings the great privilege of participating in the work of Christ.

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.

Are you ready for Lent? Check out our Lenten resources!

"The fast of Lent has no advantage to us unless it brings about our spiritual renewal. It is necessary while fasting to change our whole life and practice virtue. Turning away from all wickedness means keeping our tongue in check, restraining our anger,

Spend a little dedicated time in prayer and reflection by participating in our seven-day virtual retreat (also available in PDF) focused on marriage. This year the retreat theme is “Marriage: Made for a Reason.”

Sex is good. It isn’t dirty or naughty or some kind of half-hearted concession to our fallen animalistic nature…it is good, just as it was good in the beginning. Be fruitful and multiply, He said. And so we are, and we do.

“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,

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?

We bet you haven't thought of ALL of these ...

This year Pope Francis will canonize Blessed Paul VI in the 50th anniversary year of his encyclical Humanae Vitae, “on the regulation of birth.”

Canonization is the ultimate declaration that we should pay attention to someone’s life. Thus, we are given St. Paul VI in part, to reaffirm his teaching on openness to life.

At 50 years, it is clearer now than ever that we should be grateful for Humanae Vitae.

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.

Every vocation is born of sacrifice, is maintained by sacrifice, and is measured in the apostolate by the sacrifice of those whom God calls to the priesthood or the religious life. This should not be surprising, once we realize that it was by His sacrifice that Christ redeemed the world.

Saint Pope John Paul II speaks of the “feminine genius” in his letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women. What is the definition and origin of the word genius?

gen·ius
ˈjēnyəs/

....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".