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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
catholic family life | family prayer | work/life balance
It's been a couple of months since I last wrote an article. In those few months, it feels like my life took a backflip into our backyard pool. In some ways, the backflip feels graceful, and the cool water is refreshing; in other ways, it feels like I've hit my head on the edge of the pool and am struggling to stay afloat. In February, I wrote about my decision to continue working as a professional in special education and taking classes to become a certified teacher. It was a decision I made because, at that time, I needed to return to work to help support my family financially, and my husband had taken a significant pay cut. However, shortly after that article was published, my husband was offered a new job. A job that was wonderful for our family in many ways. He no longer had to travel for work; he'd be home every night. The pay was better than it had been before his pay cut. Changing My Mind About My New Direction
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
There’s an old Irish saying, which goes; “The most beautiful road is the one that leads you home.” We are on a journey, with a destination in mind. But if we’re honest, most of us pack for life as if this world were the final destination, extra baggage, emergency snacks, a few “just in case” projects. We live as if we are settling in for good, when in reality, we are all just passing through the departure lounge. And speaking of travel, let me share with you a story my friend forwarded to me. There is this couple from Minnesota, they were experiencing a freezing and severe winter. And so they decided, well, why don't we go down to Florida to experience some good weather? And they said, well, why don't we see if we can stay at the same hotel where they honeymooned 20 years earlier? So they made the arrangements. With the last-minute bookings, the only little hiccup was that they couldn't get on the same flight. And so they agreed that the husband will fly down on Thursday; the wife was coming on Friday. And the husband arrives safely at Florida.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Every generation of young people have the saints for whom they feel a particular devotion. Teenagers and children today clearly love Blessed Carlo Acutis, who will be canonized on September 7. It makes sense; he’s one of them, a teenager himself, and someone who effortlessly used the tools of our digital world. Many Catholics around my age, we Gen X Catholics, feel a special connection with today’s saint, Maximilian Kolbe. Maybe it’s because ours was really the last generation to grow up in the shadow of World War II -- with a real consciousness of it as a battle for humanity’s soul -- since many of us had grandparents who had fought in Europe or Japan.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
If you’ve ever been stuck in the slowest line at the grocery store, you know a little of what Moses felt. Forty years of leading Israel through the wilderness was like being trapped behind a customer with 20 coupons, a cart full of melons, and a personal chat with the cashier. Just when you think you’re finally getting out, the lane closes. Moses led the people for forty years, through wilderness, disasters, rebellions, and at the end, God shows him the Promised Land from a mountaintop and God says, “Beautiful, isn’t it? But “You will not enter it. Thank you very much, Now Joshua will take it from here.”
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Holy lives of inspiration | Why pray?
Where do we find peace in our lives—and where do our families find it? If you’ve ever wrestled with that question individually or as a family, today’s saint, Jane Frances de Chantal offers us great hope. Most of us think of the saints as superhuman, but in fact they are real people, as regular as you and me…what brought them to sainthood--to heroic virtue and sanctity of life was how they handled the ups and downs of life by turning to God.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Why pray?
There is something interesting about how we remember things. When I was a child, we had a steel trunk under the bed, packed with old clothes, letters, books, old silverware, and photographs. On some days, my mother would open it, sit on the floor, and start pulling things out: a yellowed shirt, a broken pair of spectacles, a letter written in ink so faded it looked like fog. Every time she opened it, we kids would groan, “Not again!” because we knew we were about to sit through another episode of The Dusty Chronicles, staring at silverware from 1972. But she’d sit on the floor like a museum curator, holding up the silverware, “Shhh… This is who we are.” She wasn’t preserving junk. She was preserving meaning.
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