Faith in Focus

Whenever I hear someone say, “Offer it up,” I remember Sally. Sally had a fondness for sweets, but they weren’t good for her. Every time she spied me sneaking a cookie or candy bar, she would stare intently at me, hoping I would feel guilty and share. “Offer it up,” I w

Last year, three times per week, I would stumble out of the 59th Street subway station in midtown Manhattan, stupefied by the competing traffic jam of landmarks. Trump Tower shot up from my left as Christopher Columbus balanced himself on my right, claiming dominion over his stone pillar and the int

Should I feel guilty? The question nagged at me—a good Catholic question, pecking at my conscience as I sat under a shaggy tree on the grounds of a great monastery and listened to the bell as it tolled. It was time to pray. I should have been heading to the church. Others on retreat would be i

I am in the kitchen, whipping up a batch of fig cake, and as I sort through the handwritten recipes in my collection, I recall the two grandmothers who were related to me not by blood but by love. In 1988 my husband, his sister and I traveled to Brandon, Miss., to visit their grandmother, Sadie, who

I rise at 4:30 every morning to get a jump on a 70-mile drive to work. To keep some semblance of order, I try to do the same thing every day at the same time. It starts with getting out of bed, making the coffee and heading outside to pick up the morning newspaper. It is always dark, and I am carefu

Psalm 150 happened in our youth center last night, although we might have to change some of the words to make it an exact fit:

          Praise him with bass and lead guitar

It is Saturday morning, and I am standing in front of the open refrigerator, surveying the contents, while my mind hurtles into a familiar routine. I had fried fish for lunch yesterday, I reflect, and a sundae after dinner. The conclusion is swift and ruthless. Instead of French toast or a bagel wit

My late husband and I often caught the tail end of a popular television talk show while we were waiting for the news to begin. One evening Tao, a guest of one of the hostesses, got into an animated dialogue over the definition of love. A beautiful actress, whose name escapes me, painted that virtue

It was an unexceptional Catholic childhood in the Rochester, N.Y., of the 1950’s: St. Boniface parochial school, the family rosary (for the conversion of Communist Russia), pennies placed in our cardboard collection boxes to save pagan babies and serving as an altar boy. Although we had neighb

“Stop! Don’t Shop on Sunday.” That was the advice of a large poster hanging on a wall of our Catholic Labor Alliance office in Chicago during the 1950’s. We drummed home the same message in our monthly publication, called Work, and in a pamphlet I wrote for Ave Maria Press. I