“If you want a fresh start in 2023, make space for silence. This is how life was intended – before busyness became a badge of honor, before the advent of social media, named after the noise they make: Twitter, TikTok.”
Christina Capecchi: On snow and silence: learning to listen in a noisy world
Laura Kelly Fanucci: Praying to God of the sick when you’re sick of being sick
“Caught in our own endless slog of hacking coughs, feverish kids and runny noses, I started stockpiling ways to pray through this winter’s sick season.”
Mary Marrocco: Like St. Francis, we can learn from the poor
“It’s not an ideology, principle or method that St. Francis embodies. It’s his love of Christ crucified.”
Christina Capecchi: The first notes: when music and prayer converge
As Guido Monaco, an 11th-century Italian, poured over the manuscripts in the abbey’s library, he wondered: Why couldn’t music be written down and read like the words in a book?
Greg Erlandson: The advent of population decline
“Instead of population growth and growing birthrates, the fast-approaching new demographic challenge is societal aging.”
Inside the Capitol: Opportunities for a positive vision of the good
Potential “policy challenges present a tremendous opportunity for Minnesota Catholics to, as Pope Francis has said, ‘meddle in politics’ by proposing a positive vision: the ability to choose what we ought, not the license to choose what we want.”
Guest commentary: ‘O come, let us adore him’
“What if, on Christmas Eve, each parish were to offer Eucharistic adoration before one of the Christmas Masses?”
Father Ron Rolheiser: Writing your own obituary
“This can be a very helpful exercise for each of us to do, except that such a will is not done in a lawyer’s office, but in prayer, perhaps with a spiritual director, a counselor, or a confessor helping us.”