Every year, the Vatican unveils a Nativity scene from a different diocese, often using materials or artistic styles from the particular region or country where the diocese is located.
Category: Features
As the writer writes, the saint… saints!
It’s usually fathers who ask me, and usually – about two-thirds of the time – daughters they’re asking for. Their children want to become writers or journalists, and they ask me to tell them how to do that. (No one has ever asked me to talk to his child about becoming an editor.)
Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl: A missionary and a mystic
The 20th Century was one of history’s most violent and war-torn, marked by atheistic, anti-human revolutions and ideologies that continue today.
How to celebrate a Catholic Christmas
The Church offers us a richer way to celebrate Christmas, writes Amy Welborn For Catholics, great feasts like Christmas don’t come at us out of the blue: In the secular world, ‘Christmas’ seems to start in October! However, our approach to this holiday as Catholics must be different, and it can be. We can put…
A festive selection of holiday films
John Mulderig One promising way to get in the holiday mood is to watch a Christmas-themed movie. And, since yuletide films naturally tend to qualify as family-friendly, they can also provide an opportunity to gather the clan, make some popcorn and relax together. Following, in alphabetical order, are capsule reviews of eight such pictures with…
Let the warmth of Advent pull the bleak midwinter from you
Christina Rosetti’s poem, In the Bleak Midwinter, is a Christmas classic. “In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. . .” As Advent begins and the first wintry weather sets in, those words come to mind. As I write, today is such a day – gusty…
Spend this Advent season with the saints
No one knows better how to prepare for welcoming Christ than the saints,writes Bert Ghezzi Advent prepares us for Jesus’ coming at Christmas and for his coming into our lives afresh. And no one knows how to get ready to welcome Christ better than the saints. They express their love for him by putting him…
Insta-culture and a powerful Advent lesson on delayed gratification
Scott Richert When my sisters and I were young, my mother would spend all of Advent baking cookies and making candy. That may hardly seem remarkable; after all, countless millions of Christmas cookies are baked and consumed every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. But my mother didn’t eat any of the cookies she…
Pray the news, pray the media, and imbue the culture with Christ
Sr Nancy Usselmann Though they’re gifts from God, living and working behind our media screens can sap our energy and leave us feeling listless and spiritually dry. Growing our spiritual lives while immersed in a digital world requires a media spirituality that centres us in Christ, the perfect communicator. Blessed James Alberione developed Pauline spirituality…
Distinguishing between what God wills and what God allows
It’s important to understand God’s will properly, writes Emily Stimpson Chapman Question: Which of the following events were God’s will? The Fall of man? The Crucifixion? The most recent car accident you were in? Last month’s breakup with your significant other? Answer: They were all God’s will … at least in a way. How’s that…
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