"Spotlight of a Calligrapher", published by Ascension Presents, tells the story of Erica Tighe, a designer and calligrapher. Erica's story of how she came to be a full-time calligrapher is moving and poignant. She tells how she came back from a year and a half of...
One of the best ways to enrich your experience at Sunday Mass is to pray the Mass Readings personally and to meditate on a Gospel reflection. A great way of doing this is using the technique of Lectio Divina, a powerful method that we explain here. The following is...
St. Ignatius of Loyola explains, “By the term “Spiritual Exercises” is meant every method of examination of conscience, of meditation, of contemplation, of vocal and mental prayer, and of other spiritual activities. "For just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and...
As Catholics, we are required to go to Confession once a year, but why stop there? We know Confession can be daunting or difficult, and there might be many reasons why you don’t want to go. However, regular Confession, whether it be monthly, every two weeks, or...
I love attention. I knew this from a tender age; those days I would come out to our living room packed with people to dance for them and get applauded for being such a good dancer. I basked in the admiration. As I grew older, that love matured into something more...
Depending on where you live, it's most likely that school's out for the summer, or nearly is. Or perhaps, the students and teachers in your life are still embroiled in exam preparation and stress! Either way, this time of year reminds us of the importance of teachers...
My New Year’s Resolution this year was to try and live out the commandment that appears so often in the Bible: “Be Not Afraid.” Personal circumstances meant that I had much need of this encouragement and I bounced into the New Year assuming that since I had decided...
This viral video of a young girl's poetry performance in her school classroom makes for powerful and somewhat painful viewing. She is a 7th-grade student, only twelve or thirteen years old. In watching it, my heart went out to her, because I understood her struggles....
Artists Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder built a house that spins and tilts on one pivot point. Once it was complete, they moved in and lived in it for five days. The video shows the delicate response of the house to their movements and makes a very obvious illustration...
We get it. You already have a to-do list that is long. This list isn’t meant to guilt you into an impossible regimen on top of your already crammed day. The goal is to start incorporating one or two of these things into your day and then keep working until these...
It’s no secret in the Catholic world that Bishop Robert Barron produces excellent videos on many pertinent topics. As a theologian and author, Bishop Robert Barron covers a wide range of topics in his "brief and insightful commentaries." Movies, books, politics both...
Did you know there's a 400 year-old, worldwide, supernatural fellowship (spanning heaven and earth!) for the cause of safeguarding, healing and spreading the virtue of purity? What's more, did you know that it still exists? Did you know you can join it? The Angelic...
Whether one would admit it or not, every person has preconceived notions or opinions on any given situation. These can be brought about through one’s education or just by their life experiences. How one allows those experiences affect how they relate to those around...
Life is a unique movement of light where the beginning and the end meet. Just as we are born from our mother’s womb into earthly life, so too, we’ll be born from the Earth’s womb into eternal life. The impulse that assures the completeness of such movement is the...
“What are girls made of?” That’s the question this Nike commercial asks. “Made of flowers and rings, gossip and marmalade, that is what our girls are made of,” is the response in a traditional song that the young girl in the ad responds with. The audience nods...
Self-care is a term that has grown in popularity of late. Suddenly it's everywhere: thrown around with hashtags all over social media, used in advertising and on lifestyle blogs, and even making appearances on health websites. Clearly, it means different things to...
In my life I’ve listened to diverse opinions about what candidates for the priesthood should be like, how they should behave before entering the seminary and how they should lead an impeccable life. Many people believe that those men who feel the call of God to the...
“Follow your dreams!” the world tells us when we are young, but as we grow up, we learn that living our dream is not only hard, it’s also often criticized. Especially dreams involving radical vows in a religious order, low-income paychecks at a non-profit, or...
In this Lenten series, Father Ian VanHeusen presents his weekly spiritual exercise based on the Sunday Readings to help us grow in our relationship with the Lord. What is a Spiritual Exercise, you ask? St. Ignatius of Loyola writes, “By the term “Spiritual Exercises”...
In this Lenten series, Father Ian VanHeusen gives us a weekly spiritual exercise based on the Sunday Readings to help us grow in our relationship with the Lord. What is a Spiritual Exercise, you ask? St. Ignatius of Loyola writes, “By the term “Spiritual Exercises” is...
For many young men, approaching a lady is not an easy task. There’s the fear of rejection, of looking foolish, of not knowing exactly what to say, fear of what others will say, and so on. In addition there are all the fantasies that Hollywood, television, and social...
Lent is a great time to grow in one’s faith and there are tons of ways one can make Lent more fruitful. However, since most often, the penances we adopt during Lent don’t stick on after Easter, I wanted to present a set of challenges to those who really want to grow...
“If you want to challenge yourself, you have to rethink what you consider impossible.” So begins the opening of this 2015 experiment that involves the Berlin Wall, a group of school children and a storybook about a cat. The challenge that has been set in this video is...
Maybe you've attended a course, a retreat, or a workshop; maybe you've had an awakening experience through prayer, or a dialogue that stirred in you a profound desire for conversion and to follow Christ in the Church He founded (the Catholic Church). Maybe you are...
There is a lot of well-founded emotion in this Buzzfeed spoken-word video “I Am Not That Girl”. There is honesty, and not a trace of self-pity as the narrator says: “having a lack of male attention in this world is seen as an abnormality, is seen as less than womanly....