In my journey back to the faith I had spent much time researching, listening, and learning about what it meant to be a daughter of God, what it meant to be a follower of Christ, and to clumsily pick up my cross and carry it. All of this seemed like an overwhelming...
Christian Picciolini was a neo-Nazi skinhead who at the age of 16 was already pushing the ideology of white-supremacy, the product of which we have again seen raising its ugly and love-less head in the last few days. In this video, Christian shares his story,...
"There's no such thing as can't!" This phrase will be familiar to many of us from our childhoods, probably met with an eye-roll and stomping off upstairs to finally clean our room. But in this video the phrase has been taken to heart as a powerful and...
What helps you when you have doubts about your faith? Doubts come to everyone, they are part-and-parcel of the concept of faith, but that does not mean that we are powerless against them. What we do when we experience doubts is very important. Doubts can point us in...
Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be a formula for raising Catholic kids; it's simply one family's experience of how the witness of parents shaped children who became faithful Catholic adults. Each of my siblings and I got to a point in life where we had to choose...
Islam and Christianity. How do we begin to talk about this elephant in the room? On the one hand, Islamist persecution of Christians is a plague in places like Iraq, parts of Africa, Marawi City in the Philippines, and elsewhere. We must pray more ardently than ever...
"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...
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...
Here's a battle I sometimes fight with myself: vacillating between exuberant repetitiveness about my faith, my conversion, how amazing God is, how I wish everyone I love would convert (for their own well-being and happiness!), how I wish every Catholic in the pews on...
The late Cardinal Suenens, one of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council, said the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is not a “movement” in the usual sense of the word, but it is a “current of grace.” Cardinal Suenens saw the Charismatic Renewal as a rekindling of the...
Last week Catholic-Link published an article about Esmeralda Solís Gonzáles, a young woman who left behind her life as a beauty queen in Mexico to pursue a religious vocation with the Poor Clare Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament. Today, we have another inspiring...
“You mustn't be afraid. If God is calling you, he'll take care of everything. All you need to do is receive him with a lot of peace, joy, and confidence. I believe fear is a big excuse that is responsible for truncating the true happiness that only God can offer,”...
I may be a seminarian, but I’m a huge fan of romantic tales. I like movies with happy endings when the boy gets the girl. I enjoy hearing stories about how couples met or what they did on their anniversary. And one of my favorite things is watching friends of mine...
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....
There are times when life just doesn't make sense at all. It's a total mystery why God would ask us to go through trials, tragedies, and suffering. During these dark seasons of life, it can be tempting to turn to despair and become angry with God and His plan for our...
Millennials! I don’t know about you, but as a young person, all the argument about whether millennials are the most spoilt, snowflake generation yet gets boring after a while. So when my (older) friend shared the “THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS GENERATION!”...
Have you ever been on Facebook and suddenly found yourself looking at wedding pictures of someone you've never even met? I'll admit, it's happened to me more than once. There's something about the joy in the life of another that draws us in. We want to see it,...
Christmas 2016 marked one year without alcohol for me. I still haven't had any alcohol and I still do not intend to ever drink again! Back in 2015, I had long been aware that I had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, but I was not aware of the depth of my...
This short video from Speak Life shares a brief but beautiful insight into the life of a mother and her daughter Leeva, who has Down’s syndrome. Leeva is taking part in a Nativity play, and all her cast-mates also have Down’s syndrome. It is explained that the play...
Growing up Catholic, Advent was always strictly observed in our home. We never skipped over it to start Christmas early. Though I had a good idea of the purpose of Advent- it being a time of preparation and prayer- I made my way though it grimly. I understood the head...
Being a single mother is one of the most difficult challenges that a woman can ever face. And I know, I am part of the club. It might be because you made the choice – perhaps the man by your side wouldn't be a good example for your children, or because of divorce,...
When Lecrae released his album Anomaly back in 2014, he became the only artist in Billboard history to have the #1 spot in both Gospel Music and the top 200. It seems he is a master of being "in the world, but not of it". His music reaches both Christians...
Have you ever heard it said that the Catholic Church oppresses women? Many are quick to pass judgment on what they think is the truth of the Catholic faith. In reality, the Catholic Church esteems women and calls us to live out the beauty of our femininity in a way...
The life of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was extraordinary: her generosity, her tireless struggle for justice, her love and care for the poorest of the poor, and the simplicity of her words and deeds. But what is most moving about her life was not only her capacity...
I recently read Catholic-Link's ‘A Single Twenty-Something Shares Her Most Intimate Concerns About Dating, Relationships, and Chastity’ article and my heart went out to the writer and her situation. I loved her willingness to make herself vulnerable to us...