Everyday Discipleship

What we call Easter is not only for the moment. It’s about the past, present and future.

The week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, Holy Week, is the most sacred time of year. During this special time, we enter into the passion of Christ through liturgical celebration and personal conversion.

St. Benedict the Moor was the renowned lay leader of the Franciscan Brothers in Palermo, Sicily, in the 16th century, despite being illiterate and the son of enslaved African parents. Benedict’s prayerful humility, compassionate generosity, and wise, spiritual insight attracted both the simple and the powerful from all over Italy to seek his counsel. He was canonized in 1807, and later named the patron saint of African Americans.

The Church blesses and uses three holy oils: the oil of the sick, the oil of the catechumens and the holy chrism oil. Each has a distinctive purpose in the Church.

Our Lenten journey engages us in the becoming, completion and wholeness, as we follow Christ.

Despite a mystical experience at the age of 20 that left her with a burning desire to consecrate her life to the Lord through prayer and penance, Benedetta Cambiagio submitted to her parents’ wishes and married Giovanni Frassinello at age 25 in the city of Pavia, south of Milan in northern Italy. After a couple of years of witnessing his wife’s devotion to God and wish to enter the religious life, Giovanni agreed to living chastely with Benedetta “as brother and sister.”

When is the last time you packed for a trip? What we pack is very connected to how we see ourselves. In our minds and hearts, we pack every day for how we want to be and how we want others to see us.

In the decade since Pope Francis issued a wide-ranging document on pastoral care for the family, the Catholic Church in the U.S. has leaned into ministries that address often hidden suffering, including infertility, child loss and domestic violence.