Pause+Pray

In the spirit of seeing every encounter as a blessing, let me bring beauty and healing to all my relationships.

Delivery specialists, sanitation workers, bakers, electricians, nurses, cooks, and carpenters: How often do we thank people we cannot always see but who keep our lives humming?

Are you too busy to be bored? I hope not. It might seem like an odd thing to celebrate, but in our world of nonstop digital interaction and hurried work and family life, boredom is something of a rarity.

As the world around us thaws and blossoms, new truths about God catch our attention in everyday ways. Let your observation of the changes brought by spring point your soul back to the resurrection.

Can we begin the morning in the most gentle way possible? Simply being? Just knowing in the silence that God is already here.

In his 2024 message for Lent, Pope Francis writes, “Lent is a season of grace in which the desert can become once more—in the words of the prophet Hosea—the place of our first love (Hos 2:16–17).”