Lent, as a season of penance and preparation, served as the perfect time to push myself out of my spiritual and physical comfort zone––both for my own sake and for those coming to the performance.
Faith in Focus
I went to the Met to look at Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes. I didn’t expect to find my old Jesuit friend.
It was Drew Christiansen, S.J., even more than Thoreau or Aquinas, whom I was surprised to encounter amid the German landscapes on the Upper East Side.
A young comedian’s complicated relationship with Catholicism
And the Easter Mass that moved her
Watching ‘The Chosen’ in prison
It is a profound thing, when society has labeled you a criminal and a felon, to think that at the center of the world’s most populous faith tradition is a man whom those in power at the time condemned as a criminal.
At age 95, I’m trying a softer approach to Lent
I’m hoping that a softer approach to these 40 days will help prepare me for the more difficult ones I know are coming.
Why Pope Francis means so much to non-Catholics
The thought of losing Pope Francis one day is a hard one for me to grapple with; I know my reasons why. What surprised me was how many of my non-Catholic friends, even those whose feelings toward the church are decisively negative, also expressed their care and concern.
Letters for Lent: What I learned writing and mailing 40 notes
Lesson one: I had to buy more stamps.
We documented the faith lives of young Latino Catholics. Here’s what we learned.
Young Latinos are constantly negotiating who they are as people of faith and as members of our society. Some feel alone, others rejected, others not fully understood. Yet all carry in their lives an element of hope to which the church must pay attention.
Seeing what is holy in every religious tradition: Lessons from 100 retreats at a Camaldolese monastery
I know of nowhere saner or more steadying, especially in a world of acceleration and contention.
Ash Wednesday services remind us of death. I bring my children anyway.
If end-of-life care matters, surely it can be strengthened by beginning-of-life wisdom. On this first day of Lent and year-round, I want to model for my children clear-eyed acceptance of what we cannot control and agency in what we can.
