Lingering on Saturday: As a Hen Gathers Her Brood

On Holy Saturday God longs to gather us close like a mother hen

I lean back at the bottom of the blue plastic slide, aware of my hair sticking to the static, the sandburs piercing the soles of my shoes, and our English words echoing off the wall that lines the perimeter of the park, our clunky foreignness flittering up to the open windows. The playground in this…

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How To Holy Week: A Guide For Where You Are

Holy Week—from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday—is the most sacred week of the Christian year. Whether you’ve always celebrated Holy Week or you are new to these liturgical feasts, we invite you to enter into the beauty of this week however you can. If you’re expecting: Labor’s Stages: A Triduum. If you have a new…

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The Hardest and Holiest of Weeks 

Thin places. The ancient Celts gave us this phrase to capture the feeling of space and time when heaven and earth are scarcely separated. My life has held a handful of these sacred moments and holy grounds. I imagine yours has, too. I always recognized these encounters in space and time by their sheerness—the sense that I…

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Baby’s First Holy Week

baby's first holy week

Sweet boy, here we are. In the holiest of weeks. It all started on Palm Sunday. You solemnly gumming the long green palm in your father’s hands. Your brothers waving their palms wildly around the air (bonus points for whacking a sibling in the eye). Me watching all of you, half wondering why we bother to bring…

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The Forgotten Days of Holy Week

forgotten days of Holy Week

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. How easily we pass over them, eyes set eagerly on Easter Sunday. Or anticipating Thursday’s opening of the Triduum (the three liturgical days from Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday). Our first half of Holy Week probably looks a lot like yours. Work. School. Kids. Meetings. Chores. Bills. The lackluster pregame show before…

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Where I Saw Christ: Back Pew, Pink Coat

I glimpsed her at the back of a long line trailing down the aisle, shuffling forward in the slow side-to-side dance of people waiting their turn. She wore a bright fuchsia trench coat, hair coiffed in a cute side sweep. Behind her bobbed the heads of two bright-eyed daughters, brunettes like their mother. In her…

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