Pause+Pray

Reflect  Recently, in honor of St. Therese of Lisieux, I bought a dozen pink roses, and as the buds have blossomed, I’ve been captivated by how soft and full they are, awakening several times to finding them wider. I wondered ...

Reflect  A friend recently compared heaven to an all-you-can-eat buffet. He said he got the idea from Dante’s Paradiso. His theory is that the buffet table is always open, and we have all of eternity to get all we can eat. Have you ...

Reflect Somewhere towards the middle of Wendell Berry’s beautiful novel Jayber Crow, there is a beatific vision that seems utterly transcendent, and touchingly humane. Jayber gets lost in the horrible 1937 flood; soaked and exhausted, he wanders in the darkness, until ...

Reflect  In Isaiah 42:3 we read, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” These beautiful, clear images carry deep emotional weight. We are the bruised reeds. We are the struggling wicks.  ...

Reflect Has there ever been a time in your life that you wondered if you were “sorry enough” to receive absolution for your sins?  Pray Christ Most Merciful, You instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation not as a tool of oppression, but as the means of ...

Reflect “Instead they gave me poison for my food; and for my thirst they gave me vinegar” (Ps 69:22). How many times have I done this? Instead of doing someone a kindness or patiently listening to their woe, I tried to fix their ...