Catholic Church

By Sherry Antonetti, National Catholic Register - If you’re like me, you have a collection of Christmas stories for your children that come out every Advent as part of the bedtime routine. Some of the stories weather the passage of time better than others. While most people probably read “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry, there are other books which give a little taste of the season to bedtime, rather like a nutmeg sugar cookie or putting a peppermint stick in the lunch box.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - Prayer is something easily postponed. It’s something to be done if the mood is just right, or if we have an urgent need. It is seldom scheduled and easily skipped in favor of almost any other activity. We seem to be able find time for everything else, but prayer is easily set aside—I’m busy; I’m tired; I forgot; something came up.

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, Human Life International - Human beings are designed for community. Community is built on love. Children first learn how to love in families. And what they learn about love in their families is what they bring to society. If the Culture of Death is a consequence of a failure to love, and if the solution is Pope St. John Paul II’s “civilization of love,” then that effort must begin, first and foremost, in our own families… If the family is weak, then so is the whole social structure. As the late pope famously said in a homily in Australia in 1986, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.”