I was sitting in a meeting at my parish, and in the corner of the room sat a life-size statue of Saint Anthony of Padua. Several years ago, the statue was moved up from a basement storage room, and there he now sits, with the baby Jesus in his arms. Our image of St. Anthony is a bit chipped and the paint has faded, but it’s always nice to know that he’s around. Maybe some […]
I once had a student ask why we spent so much time talking about the saints; did he not attend faith formation classes to learn about Jesus? I told him that this is precisely why we learned about the saints: “our communion with the saints joins us to Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 957). The saints reveal much to us about God, and they give us an example of how to live as followers […]
![St. Patrick stained glass window - Image by Andreas F. Borchert [CC BY-SA 4.0]](https://catechistsjourney.loyolapress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/SaintPatrick-stained-glass-window675.jpg)
Having grown up in Ireland for the first 23 years of my life, I have a simple request: Stop the St. Patrick’s Day madness! For the love of St. Patrick, it is not Paddy’s Day (or Patty’s Day, which is even worse), but Saint Patrick’s Day. Some of the traditions that I see today associated with St. Patrick’s Day are so devoid of meaning to be almost comical. In Ireland, we do not celebrate St. […]
We Catholics mark the first day of the secular calendar by celebrating the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. As Bishop Robert Barron often reminds us, Marian feast days are ultimately about Jesus. Today, of course, is no exception. While we celebrate the great honor bestowed upon Mary as the Mother of God, the ultimate message of this day is that her child—Jesus—is God. Not just like God, but “God from God, Light from […]
How can you convey a love of and devotion to Mary with all the necessary background knowledge in just one class period? The simple answer is that you can’t. You have to select the greatest message you want the class to absorb, focus on it for the class, and then add more about Mother Mary throughout the year as you teach other lessons. Just as you invite her to be with you daily, you must […]
As a child I always thought of the saints as Catholic superheroes. While they may have started out as normal people like you and me, I imagined that they received their super powers of holiness after being bitten by a radioactive, grace-infused spider or by falling into a chemical pit of sacred ooze. The fact is, however, that we have all received super powers of holiness through our Baptism! Baptism transforms us from ordinary people […]
When we learn about the saints, we must remember that they were ordinary people just like us. Like us, the saints had to figure out who they were in the eyes of God and then live out that vision. They give us examples of how people dedicate their lives to God. Learning from them, we can figure out how to dedicate our lives to God, each in our own way. We can use each saint’s […]
Other than my patron saint, Joseph, and St. Ignatius of Loyola, few saints have inspired me as much as St. Augustine, whose feast we celebrate today. When I was a student at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, I studied Latin for four years and also took an elective on The Confessions of St. Augustine. The class consisted of five or six of us students translating the Confessions from Latin to English line by line under […]
This year’s celebration of the Feast Day of St. Ignatius of Loyola is more special to me than ever before. It was just a few months ago that I had the privilege of going on pilgrimage to Spain and Rome to follow in his footsteps with many of my Loyola Press colleagues! Of the many highlights of this trip, I’d have to say that the most moving was being in the spot where Ignatius spent […]
The upcoming memorial of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne has me thinking about how these saints can inspire catechetical ministers. Tradition tells us that Joachim and Anne were the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As the Saints Kit says, “They must have set the example that Mary followed to become the loving, gentle, faith-filled, courageous woman she was—the perfect woman to bear and raise the Son of God.” Now, none of us is perfect or […]
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