young woman looking at her reflection in pool - text: Reflecting on Our Individual and Communal Prayer Mini-Retreat - Malte Mueller/fStop/Getty Images
Online Retreat for Catechists

Reflecting on Our Individual and Communal Prayer Mini-Retreat: Pray Without Ceasing

In preparation for the Jubilee Year 2025, Pope Francis has asked Catholics to prepare by dedicating time in 2024 to “promote initiatives to remind people of the centrality of both individual prayer and community prayer.” With that in mind, I invite you to a three-part mini-retreat devoted to reflecting on our individual and communal prayer. May your life of prayer be enriched and filled with abundant blessings! Pray Without Ceasing I’m sure you are familiar […]

Guided Reflection on the Celebration of Confirmation - dove next to text
Liturgy and Sacraments

Guided Reflection on the Celebration of Confirmation

It’s helpful to take some time after a celebration of Confirmation to reflect on the actions of the Rite and to help the newly confirmed recognize the graces experienced in the sacrament. At a gathering sometime soon after the Confirmation Mass, lead young people in a guided reflection to process their experience of the sacrament. Prepare to share the reflection by reading it through ahead of time. During the session you may wish to use […]

Jubilee 2025 Pilgrims of Hope logo - four figures embracing the cross, which turns into an anchor over the waves at the bottom
Prayer/Guided Reflections

2024: A Year of Prayer in Preparation for Jubilee 2025

As I’ve shared previously, Pope Francis has announced a Jubilee Year for 2025 with the theme of “Pilgrims of Hope.” In preparation for the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis asked Catholics to prepare by dedicating time in 2023 to studying the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis has called for 2024 to be a Year of Prayer. The Jubilee website suggests the following: In preparation for the Jubilee, dioceses are invited to promote initiatives […]

Pop-Up Catechesis with Joe Paprocki
Online Retreat for Catechists

Pop-Up Catechesis: Praying with Words or in Silence

Isn’t it funny how, when you’ve known someone for a long time, you can tell by the look on his or her face what she or he is trying to say to you? We don’t always need words to communicate with someone. By the same token, it can be difficult to know how someone truly feels unless one puts it into words! When it comes to our prayer lives, at times we can rely on […]

Faith Refreshed - text over photo of water droplets by lemonade glass by Charlotte May on Pexels
Online Retreat for Catechists

Faith Refreshed Online Retreat Week 4: Three Venues of Prayer

Welcome to Week 4 of Faith Refreshed, an online retreat to help us “hit the refresh button” in our spiritual lives so that we might better see things we weren’t previously seeing and return to our lives and ministry with a new outlook! Throughout this retreat, I am drawing from my best-selling book, A Well-Built Faith: A Catholic’s Guide to Knowing and Sharing What We Believe, as we re-visit the four pillars of our Catholic […]

Pop-Up Prayer hosted by Joe Paprocki
Prayer/Guided Reflections

Pop-Up Prayer: Guest Jonathan Schott

Young adults in college are seekers in so many respects. They are seeking for identity, relationships, careers, and for meaning in their lives. Prayer is a relationship, and relationships thrive on communication: talking and listening to one another. In this episode of Pop-Up Prayer, we turn to Deacon Jonathan Schott, Assistant Director of Campus Ministry at St. John Fisher University in Rochester, NY. Jonathan enlightens us about the need to encourage young people to talk […]

Pop-Up Prayer hosted by Joe Paprocki
Ignatian Spirituality

Pop-Up Prayer: Guest Jean Heaton

I firmly believe that 12-step practices can teach us much about spirituality and, specifically, prayer. In this episode of Pop-Up Prayer, I ask Jean Heaton, author of Helping Families Recover from Addiction: Coping, Growing, and Healing through 12-Step Practices and Ignatian Spirituality, to share some insights about how each of us can find strength in prayer when we find ourselves at “the end of our rope” and experiencing powerlessness. For more information about 12-step practices […]

Living the Mass the Other Six Days of the Week
Liturgy and Sacraments

Living the Mass the Other Six Days of the Week: The Prayer of the Faithful

As we continue to journey through the National Eucharistic Revival, we are reflecting on the parts of the Mass and what each part is calling us to do and be the other six days of the week. In this episode, we look at the Prayer of the Faithful and reflect on how it helps us to begin the work of entrusting to God the needs of ourselves, others, the Church, and the world. The Prayer […]

Pop-Up Prayer hosted by Joe Paprocki
Prayer/Guided Reflections

Pop-Up Prayer: Guest Fr. Dominic Grassi

In this episode of Pop-Up Prayer, we hear some wisdom from my long-time friend, Fr. Dominic Grassi. Fr. Dom was my Department Chairman for my first job as a religion teacher back in 1981! He and I are co-authors of Living the Mass: How One Hour a Week Can Change Your Life. A lifelong Chicagoan, Fr. Dom was ordained in 1973 and has been a pastor, a teacher, a counselor, a coach, a retreat and […]

Pop-Up Prayer hosted by Joe Paprocki
Lent

Pop-Up Prayer: Guest Fr. Andy Alexander, SJ

With the season of Lent upon us, the question looms: “Do we pray differently during Lent?” To answer that question, I turned to Fr. Andy Alexander, SJ, the Director of the Collaborative Ministries Office and Online Ministries at Creighton University and co-author (with Maureen McCann Waldron), of Praying Lent: Renewing Our Lives on the Lenten Journey. For more information about praying during the Lenten season, check out the following links: Praying Lent: Renewing Our Lives […]