A year before I became a Catholic, I went on a retreat to an Orthodox monastery north of Columbus, Ohio. The monks occupied an old farm house and converted the...
Personal spirituality
Read U.S. Catholic’s coverage of personal spirituality, offering insights, stories, and resources to nurture your prayer, discernment, and spiritual growth.
“Know who you really are and how God can use you,” one of my seminary teachers exhorted. Living this injunction, simple albeit powerful in message, has been an...
Those who practice Zen refer to sitting in meditation as zazen. The Japanese word means “just sitting.” They do nothing else except sit and wait...
According to Trappist Father Thomas Keating, a decades-long practitioner and teacher of centering prayer, contemplative prayer is about relationship, not...
Pets are friends and confidants who teach us about faith, love, and our place in God’s creation. Read how pets have touched our lives and share your own...
“Glory be to God for dappled things.” So begins “Pied Beauty,” a poem by 19th-century Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem praises God with the...
I sat down on my parents’ front lawn in Los Angeles and breathed in the fresh air. I dug my hands into the dirt, relishing the feeling. Then I began tearing...
There’s a certain diagnosis you will hear over and over if you start to ask Catholics about Jesus—particularly about other Catholics’ relationships with Jesus...
Thirty years ago, the fine theologian John Shea, teaching a course on redemption, introduced me to Flannery O’Connor’s fiction. I found her stories...
Robert Orsi makes a brave choice in his recent book Between Heaven and Earth (Princeton University Press). “There’s a taboo associated with speaking out of...
