Chris and Rebecca Mann
The Our Father is our foundational prayer as Catholics. If you’re like me, you’ve said it a few times. As in, a few thousand times. Tens of thousands if you pray the Rosary or Divine Office regularly. It’s easy for something so familiar to become muscle memory and to...
The Church is sometimes referred to as the family of God. Like any family, there’s quite a motley array of people within it. It’s important to know your community, so I’ve put together a handy guide of some types of men you can find at Mass in your very own church....
“How could God let this happen?” This cry of a grieving heart expresses one of the greatest challenges to belief in a loving and all-powerful God. Suffering. It feels like a betrayal as if God has stopped being what He is supposed to be. And as much as we can observe...
Be aware. Understand. Take action. These three steps are the fundamental message of St. Ignatius’ 14 Rules for Discernment of Spirits. First, we must become aware of what is happening in our spiritual lives, specifically, where we are in relation to God and what...
You may have heard that the largest religious group in America is the “nones,” those without a religious affiliation. In January of 2024, Pew Research stated that 28% of US adults are religiously unaffiliated. Of those, many are commonly called “fallen away”...
Here are 3 ways in particular that I rely on the Holy Spirit to parent: The Holy Spirit sanctifies me and fills me with God’s love when I am empty, He comes through on his scriptural promises, and He gives practical gifts which bear fruit. Let’s dive into these one at...
We need one another. As men, we need strong women. We need their support. Women need strong men and need their support as well. When it comes to being men and women, we desperately need to be and remain GROUNDED, to avoid getting caught up and carried away by...
The act of thinking is in a bit of a predicament these days. American culture has never cared less about what has been known for millennia as "objective truth." Despite the apathy, an objective truth still guides and directs reality, whether I or anyone else cares...
What is World Youth Day? The first World Youth Day was celebrated in 1984 when Pope St. John Paul II created a gathering on Palm Sunday in Rome to celebrate the Youth Jubilee of the Holy Year of Redemption. It was expected that sixty thousand people would attend, but...
I have the great blessing of having three adopted siblings. After having six biological children, my parents decided to adopt three more. They are incredibly generous people, and I think are perhaps strongly against the idea of spending any time at all in purgatory,...
Dressing up for special occasions is a common practice, but on certain occasions, the dress itself carries its own traditions and symbolism. The reception of First Holy Communion is one such special occasion. It is common to see those receiving First Communion dressed...
One of the best and most challenging aspects of the Church is that it is composed entirely of humans, who are flawed and fallible, with their own perspectives, experiences, strengths, and weaknesses. As a result, disagreements between individuals can arise, and this...
We’ve all been there. The day just isn’t going well. The culprit could be a rough night with the kiddos, bad news, or maybe you’re just in a funk and don’t know why. I don’t enjoy any of those, but for me, the worst part is that a bad day can be hard to shake. It’s...
One of the most curious celebrations in the Catholic Church is the blessing of throats for St. Blaise’s memorial on February 3rd. I can recall as a small child being told about the blessing of throats and seeing it done at church. I sort of took it for granted, and as...
I don’t have time to pray I have almost always struggled to feel like I pray “enough.” Believe it or not, the last time that I could definitively say that I didn’t struggle with that was before I had kids. I have 5 kids now and we also have some neurodiversity in the...
I often wonder how God is interacting with my autistic daughter. Everyone’s inner relationship with God is to some extent secret, but for many we have learned to recognize the imprint of the Spirit on a person. Indeed, we have a very convenient list of such...
This is the third installment of our series on bringing children to adoration as part of a response to the USCCB’s call for a Eucharistic Revival. In the first part of the series, we looked at why it is both appropriate and important for children to go to adoration....
Welcome to the second part of our series on bringing children to adoration. In case you missed it, the first part is here. In the first part, we established that not only is it acceptable to bring children before the Lord in adoration, it is, in fact, encouraged....
This year, the USCCB has announced a three-year Eucharistic Revival. The goal of the revival is to draw people to the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith. A significant way that this call for revival is being lived out is through an increase in Eucharistic...