Real Moms of Real Saints is a an approachable book that welcomes you, sees you, and relates to you in all the struggles in motherhood.

As we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, let us learn how the town of Orvieto and its cathedral are part of its history.

Pocket Guide to Overcoming the Seven Deadly Sins helps us recognize how sin affects our lives and gives us a plan to surrender our weakness and return to the merciful Heart of Jesus.

While the legend of Saint George as a dragonslayer endures, there is truth about who he was as a man of God that speaks to the courage of this Saint.

With Mary as our guide and Mother, let us walk along with her and stand beside her as we approach these final days of Lent.

In the book The Thoughtful Home by Dia Boyle, discover how the hard work of homemaking can transform our culture one soul at a time.

Blessed Is She reviews a sweet new book, “Melody of Love,” which makes the perfect bedtime story this Christmas season.

Blessed Is She reads and reviews In the Trenches: Finding God Through Parenting Littles by Kelsey Gillespy.

In the movie, The Hidden Life, learn about the simple life of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter and his heroic suffering during World War II, which led to his beatification in 2007.

Jesus was just twelve years old when He began teaching, something He was peacefully doing while His parents frantically searched for Him for three days. In fact, He wasn’t just teaching, He was teaching the teachers!  “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers [ . . . ] and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46-47).  I love that the English word “astounded” is used here in this translation! It comes from the Latin word extonare meaning “to leave someone thunderstruck.” Jesus was leaving all those around Him thunderstruck!  This has me imagining my four-year-old walking into a mini “thunderstorm” each morning as she walks through the front doors of her preschool. With her heart and mind open and curious to the world, I imagine there are many times throughout her day that she learns something new that shifts her perspective. Something that points her to a truer and fuller understanding of the world. The image of ignorance as darkness and the truth as light is a common one in the tradition, and part of education children is leading them to this light.  The excellent teachers that help draw people into the light of truth are not working a typical nine-to-five. The ones I know consider their classroom and their students long before they are assigned a room or their first day of class begins. While summertime might be considered their vacation, it is also a time of intention and pondering on how to best engage their students. Many of the teachers I know use their personal money to purchase books and decorations for their rooms, and they do so with a desire to bring awe and wonder into the lives of their students. Creating a warm classroom is something that brings joy to them.  Then, when the leaves start falling and the air feels crisp, these teachers do eventually meet the students brought under their instruction. They greet them, memorize their faces and names, learn about their families, and think about them well past their drive home at the end of the day. They even pray for them.  Saint John Bosco wrote much on helping his students open their hearts to learning and to God.   Good teachers are there because they want to touch hearts and minds, but in order for one’s heart and mind to be touched, they have to be open to receive.  In the coffee shop I am sitting in right now, there are about ten laptops open. For those who aren’t staring at a screen, they are reading a hard copy of something, like a newspaper or a book.  This makes me reflect on my college years, and the many hours I spent behind a screen studying my notes for an upcoming exam or clicking away, writing a final paper. How often was I open to receiving the wealth of knowledge that was laid out before me?  I remember cramming for an astronomy exam, and the class that I thought would be an easy A, turned out to be one of the most challenging classes I ever took. Turns out learning about stars and black holes has a lot more to do with trigonometry, algorithms, and lab work and less to do with pondering the beauty of the night sky.  As I vented to my dad about my struggle with the course material, he said to me, “Make sure that you are studying to learn, not studying to pass an exam. If you are studying to learn, you might actually get something out of it that you will remember even after the course is over.”  These words of wisdom have stuck with me for over a decade. While I am no longer in the classroom, they challenge me to ask myself if I am reading a book just to check it off my list or if I am actually reading deeply, opening my mind to the thoughts stirred up from the author’s words.  Or, going back to the Gospel of Luke, when I hear Jesus speak, do I open myself up to being astounded by His teachings? Will I slow down enough to place myself at His feet, putting myself in the posture to receive?  Reflecting on the idea of slowing down and being quiet gives me a much greater appreciation for my daughter’s preschool teacher, and the patience she must have as she waits for her little students to still themselves to listen and learn. It also reminds me how the Lord is incredibly patient with me as I struggle to quiet my soul in His presence. So I am thankful that His grace is new every morning, and just as a good teacher, He always desires to touch my heart and bring me into His light. P.S. If you're a teacher or mom looking for a new planner, check out our newest academic year liturgical planners!  LITURGICAL PLANNERS Our Liturgical Planners are based on the Litany of Humility. Enter into prayer every day alongside this beautiful Litany. Order your days in His peace. GET YOUR PLANNER

On a late summer day, in the Italian hillside town of Castel Gandolfo, Pope Benedict XVI was speaking of springtime.  He was encouraging the ancient practice of lectio divina, which is Latin for “Divine Reading.” This form of prayer includes slowly reading and re-reading a Scripture passage using four steps: reading, meditation/reflection, prayer, and contemplation. He says in his address, “[T]he diligent reading of Sacred Scripture accompanied by prayer brings about that intimate dialogue in which the person reading hears God who is speaking, and in praying, responds to him with trusting openness of heart [ . . . ] this practice will bring to the Church - I am convinced of it - a new spiritual springtime.”  I am all about springtime. As I write, it is a mild winter day and the sun is streaming through the window, giving life to the plants on the ledge and nourishment to my soul. If we weren’t technically smack dab in the middle of the winter season, you’d think it was spring! This turn of the season never fails to lift my spirits and energize my soul. It has that “clean out your closet, shake out the rugs, and open the window” kind of feel to it. It’s a time of literal new life, and therefore, a time of hope.  With Scripture and springtime on my mind, here are a few verses to call to mind this season. Old Testament Springtime Scriptures May my teaching soak in like the rain, and my utterance drench like the dew, Like a downpour upon the grass, like a shower upon the crops. For I will proclaim the name of the LORD, praise the greatness of our God!  // Deuteronomy 32:2-3 “‘For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance. Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!” // Song of Songs: 2:11-13 Do not fear, O land! delight and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things! Do not fear, you animals in the wild, for the wilderness pastures sprout green grass. The trees bear fruit, the fig tree and the vine produce their harvest. Children of Zion, delight and rejoice in the LORD, your God! For he has faithfully given you the early rain, sending rain down on you, the early and the late rains as before. The threshing floors will be full of grain, the vats spilling over with new wine and oil. // Joel 2:21-24 Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD; as certain as the dawn is his coming. He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth. // Hosea 6:3 New Testament Springtime Scriptures “Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.” // Matthew 6:27-29 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient. Make your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand. // James 5:7-9 Just as Benedict the XVI said, the Lord desires to have an “intimate dialogue” with you. God wants to speak with you, and when His message resounds through the witness of your life, you are planting flowers wherever your path may cross. HIS WORD CHANGES LIVES God is speaking to you through His Word. In this personal study, you will learn to hear God's voice by reading slowly and praying deeply. BEGIN THE JOURNEY

Pages with highlighted sentences, notes written in ink, and coffee stains. These are some of my favorite kinds of pages to peel open, because it usually means it’s a book given to me by my mom, a book that helped her through her own vocation as a wife and home-schooling mother of seven.  One such book was written by a French Carmelite who lived in the seventeenth century:Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. The title? The Practice of the Presence of God. It is a book filled with wisdom, bringing me back to it for my second read in less than one year. I won’t be surprised if it’s a book that pulls the dust off of my bookshelf many times more. It is written through the heart and mind of a brother whose task in the monastery was to work in the kitchen.  One of the lines in my copy of this book which has stuck with me the most, is actually from the introduction written by Dorothy Day: A philosopher once said “Do what you are doing’—that is, pay attention to what you are doing. Brother Lawrence obviously had no books in his kitchen, to study ways of finding God. He had to find his way, obviously by prayer. (p.7)  This reminds me of a conversation I once had with the Mother Superior of a religious order. She said that each of her sisters was only allowed five books at a time to be kept in their room. This struck me, because I love holding on to my books, especially the ones which have shaped my spiritual life. I have way more than five books on my bookshelf, and I have many more that I still want to acquire. But what I’ve been reminded of again and again in Brother Lawrence’s book, is that it isn’t about the perfect spiritual formula that I so often try to mix up. It’s about calling Jesus to mind in the simple moments of everyday life.  One of the ways I am trying to practice this is by actively living out his words, “...we ought to act very simply towards God, speaking frankly to Him, and asking His help in things as they occurred” (p. 25).  I’m trying to invite God into everything. When my three children are all either whining or crying, I am doing my best to ask God to be there with us. Before we dive into a messy art project, I ask Jesus to be there with us (and to help prevent us from making too big a mess). When we drive to a playdate, I ask Jesus to give us safe travels and blessed conversation. Then, when there is crying, or finger paint all over the kitchen chairs, or freezing cold weather to carry the children in and out of the car and I am tempted to complain, I can be encouraged by Brother Lawrence’s reminder that “our business is simply to love and be happy in God” (p. 28).  One person observed that Brother Lawrence “was more united with God during his ordinary activities than in religious exercises, in which he was generally afflicted with spiritual dryness” (p. 32).  How amazing! I often daydream about quiet moments of prayer with God. Yet here we have an example of someone who lived out his call exactly how it is meant to be! He lived out his vocation, as a brother and as someone responsible for a kitchen, by practicing the presence of God. By calling Christ to mind at every moment, and being faithful to his daily duties, Brother Lawrence trusted that Jesus would give him the grace he needed to be a joyful servant: “[W]e ought not to get tired of doing little things for the love of God, because He looks at the love rather than the work” (p. 36). This means that wiping sticky faces clean, sweeping up play dough, and simply just holding my child are all acts of great worship, so long as I do them with love.  In a letter he wrote “To a Woman in the World” he said: “To be with God it is not necessary to be always in church. We may make a chapel of our heart whereto we may escape from time to time to talk with Him quietly, humbly, and lovingly” (p. 50).  These words are beautiful, but not always easy—I do not always remember that the Trinity dwells within my soul because of my Baptism. Sometimes the escape I long for is an hour in Eucharistic Adoration or a retreat. Yet these moments of “escape” Brother Lawrence describes are often meant to be interior, and they are taken throughout the actions of one's day. It is the whispered prayer during a long day, it is a plea for mercy when falling short, it is a word of thanks for an unexpected blessing.  He is always there with you. Will you escape with Him?

Grace was poured out on me. That is, the grace to let go of trying to grasp on to control of my life was offered to me through a personal retreat written by a Sister of Life, Sister Faustina Maria Pia, S.V. The same author of the Litany of Trust, Sister Faustina recently joined us to talk about her book Jesus I Trust In You, a month-long retreat where she helps build up the courage needed to “trust fall” into Jesus’ arms.  Blessed Is She: One of the gifts of being a Sister of Life is that you get to participate in the choosing of a new name. I’d love to hear more about your name. Are there any devotions tied to it? Sister Faustina: My name is definitely a big part of how I've come to know God, and is something that, in a way, God chooses for us. My mom had a conversion through Saint Faustina and came to know God through experiencing His message of mercy. She ended up naming me Faustina before she was even canonized a Saint.  I didn’t connect with Saint Faustina when I was young because I really thought she was far beyond me. When I entered religious life I ran into an elderly sister who found out my name was Faustina. I asked her to pray for me because I was going to get a new name. She looked at me with the love of a mother, but very stern, and she said, “Don’t you dare get a new name.” She then gave me a book that she had written, The Life of Faustina Kowalska: The Authorized Biography, and it filled in the human side of Saint Faustina that I never really encountered as clearly in the diary. After reading this book I absolutely fell in love with her. I chose to take that name again because I need God’s mercy to secure me in who I am. Without His unconditional love I don’t have anywhere else to lean on.  Maria is for the Blessed Mother, and then Pia is for Padre Pio. My parents met through visiting Padre Pio when he was still alive, and Padre Pio told my dad to marry my mom, so I really owe the man my life. Saint Padre Pio is really teaching me how to suffer and to live that as love and not to separate those two things. Blessed Is She: You are the author of both The Litany of Trust and the Jesus I Trust In You retreat. Can you share a little bit about how each of these came to be? Sister Faustina: A few years into my religious life, I was in a situation that was really difficult to understand. I was looking at Jesus asking: What are you doing? The one thing that He was very clearly saying back to me was: Trust Me, trust Me.  I didn’t feel like He explained what that meant in my situation. Do I just wait for things to resolve on their own? Do I just cross my fingers? I didn’t know how to live it and apply it in real time. I started to realize that I didn’t know what trust meant. After many months of praying and struggling I was in my room, looking at the crucifix with a heaviness in my heart. I told Jesus that I wanted to understand what He was doing and then I would be okay if I knew that He was up to something specific.  His response to me was such an intimate and tender encounter with Jesus. He lifted my chin up to look into His eyes. I felt like He was saying: I don’t want your yes to depend on a bunch of circumstances. I want it to go to Me. I want you to look at Me and say, “Jesus, because You’re here in the situation and You have my life in Your hands, it's going to be okay.” It was a sheer grace. I realized it’s not about circumstances, it’s about the relationship between me and Jesus and saying yes to Him with the whole of my life. All of a sudden I felt the floodgates of my heart open up to this huge desire to trust God more deeply, and my heaviness lifted. Jesus wasn’t going to explain everything and give me His eternal vision. My situation didn’t resolve the second Jesus spoke to me, but my heart did. In that moment I heard, not audibly, but in the stillness of my heart, an invitation to write a litany of trust. So, I took out my journal right then and there. I knew the Litany of Humility so I used that format and within ten minutes it was done. Without thinking much, I simply wrote everything that came over my heart. I held on to it for about a year without telling anybody and just prayed it on my own. A year later I was at a young adult event and I ended my talk on mercy with my litany. Afterwards there was a line of people asking me for a copy of the prayer, but I didn’t have any, so it took off from there.  The book wasn’t anything I intended, either. A few people told me they thought God was calling me to write, and I asked God to make it clear if this is what He wanted. The next day I received an email from a publisher asking me to write a book and offering to publish it. My Mother Superior said, “Yes, you’re going to do this,” and then writing the book became part of my obedience.  I was asked to write during a very busy season of traveling, but the invitation for the book offer came right at the beginning of 2020, and then the world shut down and I had this huge window of time in which to meet my deadline. Everything was truly God.   Blessed Is She: In your book you write about asking God to give us the grace to let go of our plans, because they might limit His plans. You talk about living your life as being a gift unraveled for Jesus. Can you explain what this looks like? Sister Faustina: God sees life from the eternal perspective. We see the very small side of heaven that we’re on. What I mean by the unraveling of the gift of our lives is that as Christians, we receive new life in Christ, and the essential part of receiving this new life is a death to self. I’m losing myself to gain life, to gain Christ, Who is Life. Trust is what enables us to live those little or big deaths. Trust is so pivotal in all this because we need to engage this death to self and see it as it truly is—a giving of ourselves to God. Trust is the hinge to the doorway to new life. It’s this openness in a radical way to His thinking, His eternal perspective. God is putting an invitation out there in the midst of those situations to ask: Will you give Me yourself? Will you let go of your expectations or your plans?  Who are we to say where our love will be the most fruitful? That surrender and gift to God is where we come alive.  Blessed Is She: On my window I have written your quotation, “The future lies in eternity, which is our only goal. The treasure of time, which Jesus jumped into so readily, is that it invites us to begin to receive eternity now.” How does every minute have infinite value? Sister Faustina: The Sisters of Life wear a medal on the outside of their habit that has a beautiful little quotation from a poem. It has a picture of Jesus and says, “Nothing would again be casual or small.” It is this reality that because Christ became incarnate and assumed human nature, the whole of our life is sacred. We believe that because of Christ, even the most mundane things are sacred and have eternal value. This is stunning. That’s what Jesus taught for thirty years when He lived in the quiet of His home with His parents. For thirty years He decided to stay at home to live a hidden life, interceding for us in His daily tests and daily prayer. Every vocation has humble jobs, and that brings us to the place of encounter with Jesus. He knows the fidelity to the small things because of His own hidden years.  Jesus comes to dine with us, so to speak, in the most intimate place of our existence, the interior of our hearts, to live there, to do the dishes with us, to hear what we hear and inspire us in our conversations, to sweep the floor with us: that’s how much He wants to be with us.  Blessed Is She: Is there anything else you would like to share? Sister Faustina: The biggest thing is that trust has really taught me that God is good. And that I am good. He keeps loving me, and that does not get old. It just keeps soaking in deeper and it frees the heart.  A “trust fall” is so easy for a little girl in the arms of her father whom she knows loves her. If we could begin to know how strong God is and how much He loves us, we would know that He’s not going to drop us. He wants us to fall into His arms. That’s all He wants. To let our hearts be embraced by Him. That gives Him so much joy. 

It was the perfect storm. It was my scheduled morning out to do whatever I wanted and I was so looking forward to it. I was going to drop my daughter off at school and head to my favorite coffee shop for a few hours. It was going to be amazing.  That is, until illness caused me to have to cancel our babysitter as she was en route to our house and my grand vision for the day was turned on its head. Suddenly I was no longer walking out the door, but rather, trying to balance a crying newborn on one hip and a crying toddler on the other.  This was the moment I needed to recall the words of encouragement I had read from a book that my mother gave to me—a book she read herself in her own busy days tending to her seven children. It is titled Holiness for Housewives (and other working women), and it was written by a Benedictine named Dom Hubert Van Zeller. It is divided into four parts: on the special vocation as a housewife, praying during daily duties, growing holier day by day, and particular prayers for housewives.  1. Your Special Vocation As A Housewife This first section reads: “Your occupation, associates, material surroundings, health and strength are there, are real, are the solids, are the substance from which the here-and-now house of God is to be built” (p. 13).  On this particular day when my plans were upset, God’s will for my day had become clear in a very concrete way. On this day God didn’t intend for me to build up His house through me sitting in a coffee shop. He intended for me to build up His house by being present to my children, brainstorming craft ideas, and spending time outside together during an abnormally warm fall day.  Van Zeller writes that “it is always the present moment, the present duty, that counts [ . . . ] There is nothing that you are up against that God has not given you the grace to surmount” (p.16).  This reminder of being present helped me to get off the couch and get outside with my children.  2. How To Pray Amidst Your Daily Duties Every day, as soon as my kids are napping, I am tempted to start checking off my to-do list. If I haven’t yet prayed that day, I need to ask God to give me “the grace to surmount” my selfishness in order to pause for a few minutes to be with Him. But when I am going about my daily duties, washing the dishes and sweeping the floor, those can become acts of prayer too.  Van Zeller writes,“You will have to find a way of communicating with God by means of and not in spite of the calls upon your time and energy and patience” (p. 26).  He goes on to describe that for one person this might mean singing the Psalms in choir, while for another it could be teaching children. Perhaps it could also mean offering up the suffering one experiences during illness. The point is that when we direct our efforts to the Lord, no matter how small, our effort then becomes a prayer. This is what the Saints did, who “did not start off with the gift of recollection: they practiced dedicating their works to God until it became a habit to dedicate their minutes to Him” (p. 28).  This reminds me that my prayer does not have to end with the start of my to-do list or the waking of my children. When I orient my daily responsibilities to the Lord in worship, each act I make can then bring Him glory.  3. How To Grow Holier Day By Day So often, growing in holiness is simply about opening our hands to receive what God has for us. Yet oftentimes, this can mean accepting the suffering in our lives.  Van Zeller explains that “love is the end of our endeavor.” Further, “A love that is exacted from the soul by a suffering imposed by God is better than a love that is expressed by a mortification chosen by the soul” (p. 54).  This is a hard one, as I think it can be tempting to think that a different cross would be easier to bear than our own. Yet it is precisely through bearing the unique grain of our own cross that we become united to Christ in love.  Van Zeller says further, “In proportion as you draw near to Truth by prayer, you inevitably increase your own conformity to the true patterns of yourself as it exists in the mind of God. And this means that, whatever it feels like, your life is going right” (p. 62).  4. Prayers For Housewives This fourth section of the book offers a myriad of prayers: prayers to start and end your day, prayers for special needs, and also books for recommended reading. One of my favorite prayers listed is the very honest, refreshing, morning dedication: I place the uncertainties of this day in Your hands, Lord. Turn them into certainties that are bound to bring glory to You. For my part, so far as I can, I foresee the events that either appear on my calendar or simply happen in the ordinary course of routine. These, together with the unforeseen events, I offer to You. Bless also all the interruptions, the accidents, the pleasant surprises, and the sudden disappointments. I might not remember to pray to You at the time, so I now refer all these things to the glory of Your name. Amen. (p.71)  I need the reminders inside this book to encourage me when the “unforeseen events” happen, when “all the interruptions” and “sudden disappointments” happen. My interrupted day went far from perfect and I certainly had my failures, but it helps to know that when I submit my will to His will, each moment, whether challenging or joyful, is all a part of His plan and my sanctification. It is ordered to holiness.

As I anticipate Advent’s approach, I wonder, how will this year be different? Every year I make the “Lent” and “Advent” comparison, asking myself whether or not I should really be giving anything up for Advent, like I do for Lent. After all, I think of Advent as a time of rejoicing and celebration, not of austerity and fasting.  But then again, Jesus’ birth was one of both austerity and joy—for His birth was a result of sin and came during difficult circumstances for His parents, but it also was a time of fulfillment and hope.  It seems like something to prepare for in a more conscientious, spiritual way than we often do as our December calendars fill up. When I think about it, when I am not intentionally living out the liturgical season of Advent, I find I take the day of Jesus’ birth for granted. But what if I didn’t? What if I lived Advent out more radically? Celebrating the coming of Jesus’ birth, but also creating more space to welcome Him within my own heart. What if I left a space for Him to fill, rather than attempt to fill it with my own human distractions. Small Moments I was recently reflecting on the different seasons of prayer I have found myself in over the past ten years. As a single woman, I made holy hours, daily Mass, lectio divina, and spiritual reading a high priority. As a married woman, I still make them a priority, but my prayer life has changed. My holy hours are not as frequent, and more of my personal prayer time has shifted to prayer with my husband. A good change, but a change nonetheless.  Now, as mother of three small children, my prayer time is more or less consistent, but often chaotic. My husband and I, with our children beside us, spend a few minutes in family prayer time, reading Scripture, voicing our intentions, and consecrating our day to Mary. In addition to that, I try to get five minutes of personal prayer time, just me and Jesus. Sometimes that’s while I’m driving, sometimes that’s with my kids playing quietly beside me, and sometimes it’s when all three are sleeping (which is ideal). That being said, there are so many small chunks of time throughout my day! Just the right amount of time to grab my phone to check emails, read articles, and scroll. I don’t often consider using that time to pray, and I justify my phone time by deciding that one, two, or three minutes would be too short to enter into prayer because I’d just be interrupted anyway.  But what if I used these small moments for worship instead of web browsing?  It’s true that I may not enter into an extended time of using my imagination to dive into Iganatian prayer, nor will I have the hands and minutes to open my Bible with my journal for a strong lectio divina session.  Though what I can do is orient my mind to the present. I can consecrate those small moments to Jesus with a short prayer, and make a spiritual offering to the Lord simply through living out my vocation. As it reads in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I can seek “the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will” (CCC § 898). Further, my “daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit—indeed even the hardships of life if patiently born—all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (CCC § 901).  Using these small moments of time to pray, instead of scrolling through posts, will lead me to the still waters I thirst for. Still Waters Do we find purpose in our busyness? I know I certainly do, and Advent is a very busy time. This is why the words of Psalm 23 are at the core of this year’s Blessed Is She Advent Devotional:  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. (Psalm 23:1-2) One of the Advent devotional writers, Rachel Balducci, writes during week one, about how the Lord whispers to us of our worth, and it is simply because we are His, not because of what we can do: We hear this truth best in our rest, when we slow down—are forced to slow down—and have nowhere to turn but the deep silence within. [ . . . ] If he is offering you rest, accept it! Even if rest is not being forced upon you, invite small moments of retreat. We find our peace in the silence. (Found, p. 13)  Later on in the week, we are encouraged in the devotional to,  Leave your phone at home or in the car to allow yourself to be totally present to the presence of God. Soak in the silence and listen for the voice of the Shepherd in the quiet of your soul [ . . . ] Simply spend time with Jesus in the beauty of creation. (Found, p. 18)  These words convict me. While I may not always have silence throughout my day, I can still savor the beauty of the creation around me, and I don’t have to look very far. There is immense beauty in the creation and gifts of my spouse, my children, our home, and the beauty of the world outside our walls.  In those moments I am tempted to scroll, these words help call back to mind that I can always choose to be in the present moment, and acknowledge the reality of always being in God’s presence.  This Advent, while I don’t plan to fast as strictly as I do during Lent, I do plan to leave those small spaces of time throughout my day, as an opportunity to reflect on Psalm 23 and the words that “goodness and mercy shall follow me” (Psalm 23:6), I just have to be present to see it.  How do you see God’s goodness pursuing you? HIS WORD CHANGES LIVES God is speaking to you through His Word. In this personal study, you will learn to hear God's voice by reading slowly and praying deeply. BEGIN THE JOURNEY

After an early morning viewing of the sun rising over Lake Superior in Grand Marais, Minnesota, I was on a quiet walk back to our campsite when my friend recommended Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Father Jacques Philippe. She described it as life-changing.  At the time, I had never heard of this French author, but he soon became a personal favorite. While every single one of his books has been a great companion for a holy hour, the one I read first was his treatise on having peace of heart. And, if you let it, this book can indeed change your life.  This short, easy-to-read book is divided into three parts. Part One: Interior Peace, The Road to Saintliness It may seem like an odd place to start talking about peace, but Philippe’s opening words emphasize our powerlessness: our total incapacity to do anything without the help of God. His goal here is to speak to the power of abandonment and receptivity, to encourage us to let go of the control that we think we hold, and instead become docile to the Holy Spirit listening to how God desires to act within us. One of my favorite lines in the book is a beautifully painted word picture:  Consider the surface of a lake, above which the sun is shining. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be reflected in this lake; and the more peaceful the lake, the more perfectly it will be reflected. If, on the contrary, the surface of the lake is agitated, undulating, then the image of the sun can not be reflected in it. (p. 5) This helpful image reminds me to hurry less and sit still more. It is only then that my heart is fully open and attentive to God’s voice, and in turn, I am better able to be a mirror of His goodness and love.  Philippe is not naive to the reality that we all have struggles, but he urges us not to give too much power to our annoyances and frustrations. If we are looking for the peace that the world offers, it will be short-lived. Of course, God does not expect us to go through life without hardship. We were promised hardship. In fact, the Lord will even stir up our consciences if we are in need of repentance and a return to Him.  Phillippe explains: “We cannot truly be at peace as long as our hearts have not found their unity and our hearts cannot be unified until all our desires are subordinated to the desire to love God, to please Him and to do His will” (p. 17).  Unifying our desires with the Lord’s requires detachment and abandonment, and this can take time to grow in. But He is patient with us! Part Two: How To React To That Which Causes Us To Lose Peace This section begins with common reasons for which we might lose our peace—for example, apprehensions about the future or the fear of lacking something we desperately want such as a spouse, a child, or a specific job. This fear of lacking is something I often struggle with, so I need Philippe’s reminder that:  It is not by making certain calculations and preoccupations that one is going to find a solution [. . . ] Man is never assured of obtaining anything, and everything which he holds in his hands can easily slip from his grasp from one day to the next; there is no guarantee on which he can count absolutely. (p. 24)  Worry will get us nowhere, and yet, that is where the evil one will try to hold us. The serpent from the garden breathes behind our ears, tempting us to think (just like he did with Adam and Eve) that we know better than God and so we should put our trust in ourselves rather than our Creator. This is where we lose our peace.  Philippe paints another word picture to help us better understand why we struggle to trust in Divine Providence: As long as a person who must jump with a parachute does not jump out into the void, he cannot feel that the cords of the parachute will support him, because the parachute has not yet had the chance to open. One must first jump and it is only later that one feels carried. (p. 28)  We need to jump in order to experience that we are held.  To know that we are held we must spend time in prayer and contemplation. We won’t want to jump until we know and trust the One who promises to carry us. For “[t]he heart does not awaken to confidence until it awakens to love; we need to feel the gentleness and the tenderness of the Heart of Jesus” (p. 35).  {formbuilder:OTk3ODc=} Part Three: What The Saints Tell Us Rest assured that this obtaining of peace is a grace and not something to be hurried after or grasped at. Even the Saints had to work on practicing patience and stillness. Philippe gives selections from different Saints about peace.  Juan de Bonilla wrote: “Just as a city is not built in a day, do not think that you can achieve, in a day, this peace, this interior calm, because it is within you that a home must be built for God, while you yourself, become His temple. And it is the Lord Himself Who must handle the construction” (p. 85-86).  Saint Francis de Sales explained,  “Peace is born of humility,” and that “[i]f God makes you fall, as He did with Saint Paul, whom He threw to the ground, it is to raise you up to His glory” (p. 89, 91).  Venerable Francois-Marie-Jacob Libermann said: “To worry, to hurry in carrying out the good desires that He inspires in us is to spoil the work of grace in us and to draw us away from our perfection. Let us not try to be perfect immediately; let us undertake our accomplishments with calm, with a peaceful fidelity to that which He demands of us” (p. 105).  Will you open your heart to receive the peace that God has for you? Are you ready to take the leap from your own sense of control and into Your Maker’s providential care?

It’s a conversation I’ve heard time and time before. Just yesterday I overheard one woman ask her friend, “How are you?” To which her friend replied, “I’m good” and, wait for it . . . “SO busy!” I recently came across an article by essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider. He wrote a piece for The New York Times titled, “The ‘Busy’ Trap.” It is an insightful piece on how we use busyness as a form of self-worth. We check our calendar like we check our pulse. If our calendar affirms our busyness, our blood is still pumping and we are still living.  But are we living life to the fullest?  In our busyness do we actually leave room for leisure, or is that scheduled for an after-dinner pedicure at your local salon while you check all your notifications?  I was struck by four points in Kreider’s piece in the Times:  We’re addicted to busyness.  Kreider makes the keen observation that those who work long hours overtime trying to make ends meet consider themselves tired as opposed to busy. Busyness is rather something that many people with time intentionally seek out. They may not sign themselves up to be busy merely for the title, but because it’s second nature: “It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed . . . They’re busy because of their own ambition or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.” Too often when we (and I do include myself) have open space in our calendars, we feel a societal pressure to fill it with something.  The “latchkey” generation has been lost. Long gone seem the days that kids played outside for hours. Kreider remembers, “I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon.”  What would we do with three hours of unstructured time?  When I have three hours, I find myself experiencing a self-imposed obligation for productivity. How many appointments can I schedule, how many errands could be run, or how many words could be written?  What would happen if I started the day with no plan at all? In some ways, it scares me. Heaven forbid, would I find myself bored? But maybe this is just what the body, mind, and soul need. In these words attributed to Albert Einstein, “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”  We need space to breathe to feed our imagination. We emphasize the importance of free play for our children, but do we allow ourselves the same privilege?  {formbuilder:OTk3ODc=} Busyness wards off emptiness. Kreider points out that, “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”  These words hit me deep and stared me right in the face.  As a stay-at-home mom, having a full schedule gives me a false sense of security. It makes me feel like I have my kids involved in all the right things, whether it be a library story time or a playdate with friends. Both things are good, just need to be rightly prioritized in order to give both me and my children time in our day to simply be. Perhaps even to “stimulate our creative minds.” (Leisure) is indispensable.  Kreider explains: “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.” Here, I think Kreider is mistaking the word “idleness” for “leisure.” I think his point harkens back to the words of Albert Einstein, that quiet moments point us to true awe and wonder.  Josef Pieper, author of Leisure: The Basis of Culture, writes that idleness is actually a “deep-seated lack of calm which makes leisure impossible”—for example, scrolling mindlessly through your phone. On the other hand, Pieper describes leisure as “like a man falling asleep, for one can only fall asleep by ‘letting oneself go.’ When we really let our minds rest contemplatively on a rose in bud, on a child at play, on a divine mystery, we are rested and quickened as though by a dreamless sleep.”  If we want to truly experience beauty and have fully human lives, then leisure is indispensable.  While there is much goodness to be gleaned from “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” I do see a few flaws in Kreider’s logic. For example, it’s not possible for everyone to spontaneously meet a friend for drinks. Nor is it possible to just go outside and play whenever the wind stirs up the desire. Discipline and responsibility are also essential. But I appreciate his observations on how we use busyness as a measure of our purpose and worth.  Instead of allowing our to-do lists and calendar items to speak to us of our meaning, what if we slowed down enough to contemplate a rose in bud, and in doing so, received the truth that we were born into a beautiful world and must then be loved enough to be placed here to appreciate it.