Faith in Focus

Once I finally found the street in the South Bronx for which I had been searching, I almost immediately spotted my destination, a funeral home. From my vantage point inside the car, it looked like little more than a storefront, wedged in between a bodega and an apartment building. If it weren’

For longer than I knew, my father’s Arabic-language Bible lay on the dining table, a thick, gold-leafed tome, warm and fragile with years of page-turning, the family’s sacred text that had sustained Dad on his long journey from Syria to America. That Bible now sits atop my own bookshelf.

We were told to meet at the Bronze Door of the Vatican Palace on the morning of Dec. 23 last year. After the security check and a short wait at the foot of a monumental marble stairway, we were led up through the vast courtyard of St. Damasus, down a long gallery decorated with frescos of old maps a

At the age of 15 I was a girl who made it difficult for anyoneeven myselfto love. My upbringing has been a turbulent ride. There were struggles with anorexia, friends poorly chosen and my parents’ divorce. The only positive thing about me was something that I did not earn. I was blessed with a

After a 24-year teaching career in Catholic education, 20 of those years with the Sisters of Mercy at Mercy High School in Baltimore, I took a big risk and leapt to the public schools. I had always wanted to round out my career with a stint in public education. My move back to my family home in sout

While I was baking Christmas cookies in mid-December (oh, good, here’s another broken one!), my thoughts suddenly turned to Lent. Clearly I was en route to surpassing the average 1.4 pounds we Americans gain during the Christmas holiday season. So in a perverse sort of way, while munching my w