Spirituality

Dads, grandfathers, mentors, clergy—so many men in our communities are uplifting friends and loved ones, many going unseen. This Father’s Day, Catholic Exchange brings you true stories of fathers transforming lives. Neighborhood Favorite -Lynne Parker Davis from Atlanta, GA My dad, Jack Gordon Parke...

What don’t you like about yourself? Even after going to Confession, do you still sometimes feel ashamed of your sins? And is this making you wonder if Father God is keeping you in misery because you don’t deserve better treatment? Father God is full of compassion for you. Compassion is not something...

Jacques Maritain and his dear friend Raïssa Oumansoff were students at the Sorbonne. Their searching intellects, however, were frustrated by the fact that they could find no truth that would satisfy their restless minds. At that time Jacques was without any religious belief, and Raïssa was a self-de...

The Holy Spirit is rightly called the Sweet Guest of our souls because He is the loving God of power and consolation dwelling within us. Yet He is also called the Great Unknown because we do not know Him as much as we should. He is the powerful guest with us and within us always, yet we often fail t...

As a child I was fascinated by the television show Bewitched. I dreamed of having Samantha’s ability to twitch her nose and make a messy room neat as a pin, a broken lamp unbroken, or dress and be ready for a fancy party straight from her housework clothes. The word fascinate itself means to bewitch...

May marked the 130th anniversary of the birth of Stanisława Leszczyńska, a Servant of God and midwife at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The unveiling of a monument in her honour was preceded by a solemn Mass at the Visitationist Church in Warsaw. Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, the Archbishop of Kraków, presided over t...

I often ask young people whether they have considered a call to religious life or the priesthood. One of the usual responses I get is, “I don’t feel worthy of such a vocation.” These usually come from people who claim they are God’s beloved children. If we truly believe that we are children of God,...

I was looking at Psalm 12 and was compelled to think about my own tendency toward self sufficiency which, by itself, is an exercise in pride that I keep working on by building the virtue of surrender to Christ. The proud man’s first temptation is rarely open rebellion against God. Rebellion often be...

During World War II, the quiet mountain town of San Giovanni Rotondo was transformed by the arrival of American soldiers. The narrow streets that had once echoed with the footsteps of pilgrims were now filled with military vehicles, unfamiliar accents, and young men far from home. For Mary Pyle, the...

The world is experiencing a dramatic shift in how economies work and people live because of the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. Such an enormous shift has not occurred since the Industrial Revolution, which changed nearly everything about how people lived.  None of us individually can change t...

The Fragile Conditions of a Habitable Universe The possibility of a habitable universe seems to depend on extraordinary sensitivity upon a set of fundamental constants. Modern physics describes the universe using the gravitational constant, the speed of light, Planck’s constant, the cosmological con...

Two of my favorite Catholic days take place in early summer: the feast of the Visitation on May 31st and the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart on a Friday in June (the date varies based on Easter). At first glance, these two devotions are separate. One, a mystery of the rosary, is for Our Lady; the othe...