By Patrick Giroux France’s most celebrated martyr, Joan of Arc, was captured at the gates of the city of Compiègne in northern France in 1431. The stark history of martyrdom would repeat itself more than 350 years later in that same town, except this time it was an entire convent of nuns who would [...]
The Second Book of Maccabees, Chapter 7, recounts the horrific story of the Jewish mother who was forced to watch the killing of her seven sons during the persecution of the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 BC). This evil military general inherited a portion of Alexander the Great's empire and set about forcing everyone [...]
Consider how you would react if a man in a police uniform barged into the room where you were teaching catechism to children and, with a gun in your face, yelled: “I’ve told you many times not to speak about Jesus. You must not mention God here, otherwise I will kill you all.” And [...]
Although the small rural town of West Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, might not be familiar to most, the tragic shooting of Amish schoolchildren that took place there in 2006 probably is. It is notably one of the saddest incidents in the whole history of school shootings in this country, but it is [...]
In 1910, a newspaper column carried the following story: Jimmy, age 10, was a devoted brother to his sister, age 6. He nearly panicked when his sister fell off her bicycle and cut a large artery in her leg. The bleeding was profuse, and by the time a doctor arrived at the scene, the [...]
A few years ago I met a woman named Carolyn who, with her husband, had joined their church’s prison ministry team and were volunteering at a local prison. We were attending the same seminar where, in small group sharing, she told a riveting story. I honestly don’t recall any other details of the seminar [...]
[This article follows from the email newsletter of June 13, 2021, “An Astonishing Eucharistic Scene in a Secular Movie”.] The 1984 movie, Places in the Heart is one of the most moving tales of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity in modern film. Sally Field fittingly won the Academy Award for Best [...]
If you page through a traditional Catholic hymnbook you will eventually come across the name of Frederick William Faber (1814-1863) in the composer credits at the bottom of a given hymn. That would be Father Frederick Faber, English Catholic priest, convert to Catholicism, and composer of hymns extraordinaires. Fr. Faber made some of the [...]
Arguably history’s most beloved and fascinating saint, we sometimes forget that Joan of Arc was not a legend. She was a real person with a real calling from God to do something heroic for Christ’s Kingdom. But Joan didn’t take any up her sword on her own initiative. She was not a political phenomenon [...]
A few years ago I had the privilege of standing in the sacristy of a Ukrainian church watching a priest friend of mine prepare for Mass. The wonderful liturgies of the Church’s eastern rites (the Byzantine, Maronite, Ukrainian and others) express a richness and complexity of worship that contrasts with the simplicity of the [...]