Practicing Catholic

Practicing Catholic essays explore Catholic spiritual practices, from lectio divina to washing dishes, through personal reflections on prayer and ritual.

Write a sacred image

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...

Tune into silence

According to Trappist Father Thomas Keating, a decades-long practitioner and teacher of centering prayer, contemplative prayer is about relationship, not...

Prayer from scratch

Growing up, I spent one week every summer with my grandparents in upstate New York. It was a week full of traditions and rituals that were repeated year after...

Lessons from my garden

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...

Accompanying the suffering

As Ebola patients began to die in Africa last summer, it was not difficult for me to revisit the memory of my first AIDS patient. His death hurled me into an...

A canticle a day

One of the most valuable experiences from my boarding school days—and one that has remained with me—is the habit of formal prayer. I remember praying the Nunc...