Wash dishes Even if it is only breakfast dishes you do by hand, consider it an opportunity. You need not pray a psalm—in any ordinary sense—in order to make...
Practicing Catholic
Practicing Catholic essays explore Catholic spiritual practices, from lectio divina to washing dishes, through personal reflections on prayer and ritual.
There is a rhythm to pipe smoking, a ritual even, one that allows you, if you let it, to enter into a state of contemplation. You must pack the pipe first, and...
At my former parish I was the catechist for second graders, students for whom the chief focus and driving dynamic of the school year was, of course...
At the start of the Triduum last year, a theater monk offered our group of lectors this advice: Do your homework. Tell the story. The monks of Saint...
“In the beginning was the Word,” wrote St John. “He is the image [ikon in Greek] of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” wrote St. Paul. We meet...
I attended evening prayer for the first time at a monastery in upstate New York. I was immediately drawn to it because the service correlates perfectly with...
I took my son to church for Holy Thursday for the first time last year when he was just more than 18 months old. I worried that we’d have to leave early or...
Ash Wednesday has become a very popular feast day, perhaps more important to some people than Holy Days of Obligation. At Marquette University, where I teach...
“A poem in the pocket means we will be accompanied wherever we go,” writes Bishop Robert Morneau. Morneau’s words ring true to me. Poems have been sturdy...
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...
