The Catholic Church in China | A Short Documentary

Millennial Women Share Their Thoughts on Being Pro-life

Millennial women from a wide range of backgrounds, including pro-life feminists, pro-life progressives, and those who favor a more whole life approach to life issues and comprehensive approach to defending unborn life and supporting women, share their thoughts on being pro-life in a new video from America Media:

Lectio Divina with Fr James Martin SJ

Fr. James Martin, S.J., Editor at Large at America Magazine, introduces readers to different ways to pray with the Bible. Here, he takes an in-depth look at “Lectio Divina.” This video is part of a new series of reflections on Scripture from America and the American Bible Society.

Rhythm and Beads - Finding the music in praying the rosary

From America magazine:

My grandmother’s rosary was of amethyst-colored beads and a small silver crucifix, gray-black with tarnish. She kept it on the bureau in her bedroom near a holy card of St. Jude and a talcum powder box made of imitation satin. She’d put it in a special pouch—an old change purse, actually—when she was heading out for Mass or had a reasonably long bus ride ahead of her. When she would visit us out in the suburbs—she still lived fairly deep in the city, not all the way downtown but close enough that you could smell the breweries—she’d say her rosary in the living room, in an easy chair by the picture window, looking out at the lawn.

We kids knew we weren’t supposed to disturb her when she was praying, but I would watch her from the dining room, her lips moving softly with the rhythm of the prayer, her eyes remote yet focused, looking at the lawn, lifting to an occasional passing car, looking and not really looking at all, there and not there. And I would get a little scared watching her, a little off-kilter. Because in the depth of prayer, at the heart of it, Grandma wasn’t just beyond herself, she was beyond everything: beyond the rosary, beyond lawns, beyond families, grandchildren. When Grandma was in prayer, I wasn’t quite sure who I was anymore, who anyone was.

My mother also prayed the rosary daily, kneeling by the bed, her arms resting on the white chenille spread, the beads moving softly, steadily between her fingers as she stared out the window or occasionally lowered her head. She’d slip off to the bedroom right after the lunch dishes, and when she came back into the kitchen a while later, as she was putting on her apron you’d see the little inverted bumps on her forearms from the chenille. She also still bore the impression of whatever mysteries she’d been praying that day and would resume the housework with an aspect more joyous, sorrowful or glorious. At least for a while.

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Laudato Si - analaysis & reaction (II)

 

 

 

 



The Monk and Me: New habits of friendship - America Magazine

From America Magazine - Kaya Oakes

I met the monk, before he was a monk, on Facebook. The message icon flickered to life when an actor we both know made the connection: two writers, two creative people, two weirdoes, two Catholics. Perhaps we’d like to get acquainted? The monk back then had a different name; let’s call him Anthony, the desert father, the first monk. I went into the café where he worked, a busy spot near the school where I teach, and introduced myself. We were both members of the vanishing demographic of 30- and 40-somethings in our respective parishes, both taller than average, both of us crazy for Baroque music and difficult books, both of us, back then, just finding our way into a life of faith. I had returned from a 20-year lapse; he’d just been baptized. We were, back then, new arrivals to this messy thing called religion.

Anthony’s parish was shrinking; even at the Easter Vigil its pews were half full. But he had wandered in during his search for a church, at a time when he could barely articulate the thing that was pulling him into religion, which hadn’t been a particularly pressing issue during his childhood and had played almost no part in his adult life up until then. A charismatic pastor and a small but fiercely loyal congregation made it easy to go, week after week, to ask questions and have them answered, to begin the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, to be the single person baptized at the Easter Vigil. As an actor, he was used to having lights on his face; his parish rents a humming spotlight at Easter and shines it onto the baptismal pool. One new Catholic is wrapped in a white garment, and the entire church applauds him.