When I taught English in China, we were in a filthy, rat-infested village, crawling with giant cockroaches and shrouded in a pervasive stench. The classrooms...

On my journey into the Catholic Church, Mary was a real problem for me for a while. Even after I realized that Catholics do not worship her as a goddess, I c...

This coming Sunday is Thomas Sunday. I have always liked this Apostle, as I really relate to him, at least as far as struggling with doubt. Today, it is doub...

I love Easter so much that it is hard to write about it. I cry thinking about it. It is the most full of true joy, the most expressive of God’s mercy, the mo...

I remember listening in amazement in high school chapel at my Christian school as various guest speakers told of dramatic conversions from being ardent athei...

When I was younger I did not want the mess, the noise, the chaos, or the financial burden of children. And I was under the impression that I could be in cont...

Several years ago, after very emotional struggles with infertility and two heartbreaking miscarriages, we began our first adoption. It was a complicated affa...

In our family, we have four very intense children, two adopted with trauma histories, one with secondary trauma, one with a missing corpus callosum (the cent...

I have a hard time relating to the saints who knew they were going to be nuns from the time they were six - those saints who wanted to do nothing but pray, e...

The feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple (2 February) is one of the Twelve Major Feast Days in the Eastern Church, also known as the Purificat...

Various influences were dropped into my path that lead me into the Catholic Church, one of the most prominent being the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Comparativ...

I love this quiet, mid-week feast day celebrating Christ's rising up to Heaven in His resurrected body. He leaves us with the commission to carry on, to shar...

St. George is a popular saint, renowned for slaying a dragon and saving a princess. He is venerated as a vanquisher of evil and knight of justice, which is a...

The first time I met Babushka, my friend Ira’s 76 year old grandmother, she appeared as a tiny speck in a row boat across the water. As she drew closer, I ma...

When I was living in St. Petersburg, I rented a small, airy room in a sunny, high-ceilinged apartment on the corner of Dostoevsky Street and Candle Lane. I l...

Pascha is my favorite time of the year! I love the joy of this season, the hope of rebirth and resurrection! We celebrate this day with our Church family, be...

In these times, in our country, many women live isolated lives. Mothers feel societal pressure to do everything themselves - the cooking, the cleaning, the h...