The best-known prayer among American Catholics, after the Our Father and the Hail Mary, may be the one to Anthony of Padua, which goes, Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and cannot be found. How many times have you turned to the Portuguese-born Franciscan after losing your keys?
Saints
Posted inFaith
The Most Infallible Sign
Are joy, humor and laughter considered inappropriate for serious Catholics? If so, why?
Posted inFaith
Believe Me if You Like
I knew almost nothing about the town, except that it had some vague connection with Joan of Arc.
Posted inFaith, Features
Who was St. John of the Cross?
There are so many mistaken notions about St. John of the Cross (1542-91) that we might do well to clarify some of them.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Painted Visions of Fra Angelico
Not only did Fra Giovanni paint like an angel; he was, in his personal life, an angel himself. The friar’s “angelic” style and “rare and perfect talent,” Vasari informs us, were the result of a “simple and devout life.”
Posted inFaith, Features
Five Years with Dorothy Day
I had planned to stay a few months, but was pretty quickly hooked and remained for five years – the last five years of Dorothy’s life, as it turned out.
Posted inFaith
Who was Charles de Foucauld?
At the time of his violent death, Charles de Foucauld had had founded no congregation nor attracted any followers. And yet his witness endured.
Posted inFaith
The Saint of the Sock Drawer
I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book.
Posted inFaith
United in Happiness
It always disappoints me a bit when the celebrant at Mass chooses Eucharistic Prayer 1 (the Roman Canon) and skips the invocation of the saints, that resonant list of early martyrs recited before and after the institution narrative. The omission is all the more disappointing since one of those lists
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Halfway to Heaven
Garnished with stories of saintly figures and their teachings, Robert Ellsberg’s book consists of eight chapters that are like interlocking facets of happiness and holiness.