December feels like the soft landing every year could use. While January is often propelled by a crazed monster of executive function—New Year’s resolutions...
Advent
It was December and the night was crisp and chilly. From my doorway I watched in awe as a magnificent scene unfolded before me. A candlelight procession of...
Every year, as soon as Advent arrived, my parents would tell stories about how Christmas was celebrated “back home” in the Philippines, where they had been...
As the novel coronavirus pandemic closed churches and moved Mass and other religious celebrations online, conversations started happening among Catholics about...
The story goes that one Christmas Eve St. Francis of Assisi thought of a new way to share the news of God’s amazing love and mercy, a way that would speak to...
Perhaps no tradition fills us with as many pleasant memories as the Christmas nativity scene. Times of wonder and joy come alive when we remember the details...
Maybe it’s different for people who live in the neon glow of the Vegas strip or for people from New York, the city that never sleeps. But I hail from rural...
This whole blighted year I’ve waited for Isaiah with the agonized impatience children suffer for the arrival of Santa. Not that Isaiah is as rare a...
Every Christmas season my mom retrieves “The Book” from storage and puts it on display on the living room coffee table. It’s not a family Bible, but to us it’s...
Even though I grew up Catholics in the 1950s and ’60s, I was only remotely familiar with the custom of the Advent wreath. One or two years during my childhood...
