x Close
World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Divine Mercy Sunday | catholic family life | family prayer
Silvia Patalano-Ross reflects on how busy moms can practice Divine Mercy at home through patience, forgiveness, and small daily choices. Divine Mercy Sunday has always sounded beautiful to me. I would see the image of Jesus with rays pouring from His Heart. I have loved the simple prayer, “Jesus, I trust in You.” It is a reminder that God’s mercy is endless, something I find myself relying on more and more each day. But most years, Divine Mercy Sunday meets me in a much less peaceful place. There is always someone arguing about whose turn it is to take the dog out. There’s a child who suddenly remembers a project that is due tomorrow. It’s time to eat, but the dinner table is full of papers and half-finished art projects. I can’t tell you the number of socks I’ve dug out of the couch. These are usually the moments when I remember mercy isn’t just something we talk about in church. It’s something we practice in our homes — and for me, it’s about five minutes after I’ve already lost my patience.
Share
Catholic Family Fun | Easter season | Living the Faith
Laura Vazquez Santos explores how the Church’s fifty-day Easter season invites mothers to move from celebration to formation. Every year, I enter the Triduum with holy ambition. I imagine dim lights, whispered prayers, and children gazing reverently at a crucifix. What I usually get is my 6-year-old asking for crackers every 5 minutes during the Gospel at Mass or my preschooler sword-fighting with last year’s blessed palm. I admit that getting through the Easter season can be both logistically challenging and spiritually testing. In years past, and especially after my reversion to the Faith, I placed unrealistic pressure on myself as a mother to get everything right each Easter, as I feared my children would be more enticed by the Easter Bunny than by the amazing reality of the Resurrection.
Share
Brief and contemporary inspiration focused on hope and family prayer will be delivered to your inbox! Articles include live video, written word, and links to resources that will lead you and your family deeper into faith.
Blessed Virgin Mary | Rosary Stories | family prayer
A story of how a gathering with my closest friends budded into a love for our Heavenly Mother.
Share
Easter season | Learn more about our faith
I would like to invite us to briefly reflect on the First Reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles. There is a question in there that was directed at the Apostles, but it is also directed at each of us as followers of Jesus. “By what power or by what name have you done this?” Or as they say in politics, “Who paid you for this?” In the text we have today, there is a tension between the apostles Peter and John, on the one hand, and the religious leaders, on the other. After the resurrection, the apostles were went about healing the sick and preaching and they were arrested by the authorities.
Share
Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
A few years ago, a father named Mark sat in his car, gripping the steering wheel, unable to walk into his own house. Inside, his teenage daughter was drifting further away, and their home had become a quiet battlefield. He whispered to himself words no parent ever wants to say: “We had hoped things would be different by now.” He felt like he had failed. Finally, he went inside… sat on the floor outside her bedroom… and said, “I don’t have the answers. But I am here. And I love you.” That moment—was not strength. It was vulnerability.
Share
Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Today’s dramatic healing in the first reading takes place just outside the Temple at what was called the Beautiful Gate. We’re told it was named this because it was grand in size and ornate in design… something to behold, something fitting. But what took place just outside of it that we’ve just heard… brought a different kind of beauty…one that was wrought from the power of Jesus’ Name…one that was shared by Peter and John with that man begging for alms. The meaning of the Beautiful Gate changed…when a man born with a physical disability encountered Peter and John, who had faith in Jesus. If you think about it, the man whose life was changed forever, up until that day, had the same routine, which included being carried to the Temple gate to beg for alms to survive each day. And it must have worked; he must have received enough money or food from others to make it through the day, and then been carried home. That is, until he met two men who had something else to offer.
Share
