How Memorizing Prayers Together Brought My Family Closer to God
Last fall, signs outside our parish and notices within our weekly bulletin reminded my family that the month of October in our Catholic faith is…
hail mary
No Mere Greeting: The Hidden Meaning of the Hail Mary
One thing that makes the rosary one of my favorite devotions is that it is essentially a scriptural prayer. This is true in two ways:…
Do we ever say the Hail Mary at Mass?
No, the Hail Mary is not a part of the Catholic Mass. That said, I have been to a few Masses where the priest inserts…
Who wrote the Hail Mary prayer?
Actually, we owe the first half of it to the angel Gabriel and to Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with…
Hail Mary, full of… umm, full of…
My memory… it slips sometimes.  I wish I could blame it on my advancing age. After all, forty is right around the corner and I’d…
Mary Was Here
When I was ten, my favorite movie was Mary Poppins. As it begins, British siblings Jane and Michael Banks write an advertisement listing their requirements…
Is the Rosary the most important Catholic prayer? Did it originate with Jesus? Why has Pope John Paul II changed it?
The rosary is not the most important Catholic prayer–that “honor” belongs to the Eucharist–but it has been a popular and widespread devotion among Catholics from…
Busted: Garry Wills
As a cultural historian and author, Garry Wills has spent more than three decades researching and writing on historical figures like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln…
Lifeline
I’ve never found the rosary particularly helpful to my prayer. Truth be told, most of the time when I pray, I use my own words.…
