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I shall be somewhere near here - some miles away in fact - next weekend, helping to give a retreat on the theme of the "Tender Father" (a TLIG retreat). I am leaving tomorrow to go south to stay at a friend's house in preparation for the flight from Heathrow on Wednesday. I am taking my laptop but I don't know if I will be able to blog from the hotel in Canada. I will not see any of the sights until the retreat is over, then I have two days to relax before I fly back.

Oops sorry! Wrong blog!

By Allison Salerno If you want to experience the vibrancy of the Christian faith, I encourage you to head to Manhattan on Martin Luther King weekend in January.  Hey - if enough of you decide to show up, perhaps we can make plans to meet for espresso. Let me know! The New York Encounter, which begins on Friday, January 13,  is an annual three-day cultural festival sponsored by the ecclesiastical group Communion and Liberation and Crossroads Cultural Center. It is free and family friendly, with plenty of kids and babies and teens and grandparents. The setting is near Penn Station, at  he Manhattan Center. Last year, I was deeply moved by the young adults I met who are the next generation of faith-filled Catholics. I spent hours attending beautiful artistic presentations and stimulating talks. I also volunteered with my teenaged son at the espresso bar, which gave me the opportunity to meet young Catholics from across the United States and the rest of the globe. Thi

Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins , Hieronymus Francken II, c.1616 Readings   (New American Bible: Philippines, USA) Gospel Matthew 25:1-13 (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) Jesus told this parable to his disciples: 'The kingdom of heaven will be like this: Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were sensible: the foolish ones did take their lamps, but they brought no oil, whereas the sensible ones took flasks of oil as well as their lamps. The bridegroom was late, and they all grew drowsy and fell asleep. But at midnight there was a cry, "The bridegroom is here! Go out and meet him." At this, all those bridesmaids woke up and trimmed their lamps, and the foolish ones said to the sensible ones, "Give us some of your oil: our lamps are going out". But they replied, "There may not be enough for us an

Last weekend I gave a retreat on "Mary and the Gift of Motherhood". We had up to 21 people, most of them women. The talks I gave were based around the meaning of motherhood - going beyond, but not ever departing from, actual motherhood - the motherhood of Our Lady, and the way motherhood is misunderstood and downgraded in modern society. I even made reference to the motherhood of priests. I was thinking that I might put edited versions of the talks on my blog or in some other place (avoiding the bin). If anyone is interested I may be able to send them by email, but I need to edit them because of references to books, quotations etc.

My husband and I are by no means economically poor. We own a home. We both are professionals employed full time. We are not worried about being laid off. We have health insurance. We do not use credit cards. We do not worry about making our mortgage payments or paying for groceries. And yet, like so many Americans, we are pinched. Right now, we need to replace our oven, our washing machine and, we just found out today, the engine on our used minivan. (That will cost us $2,100. Yikes.) It's easy for both of us to feel burdened by the bills, to focus on how we are getting by instead of ahead financially. It can feel suffocating when I start to define myself by the bills we owe. Thank God for the gift of literature. My high school juniors are reading Geoffrey Chaucer's  Canterbury Tales , the medieval story about 29 pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. He paints a portrait of life in 14th century England and dir

In Motherhood Matters , Canadian author Dorothy Pilarski writes with profundity and wit about matters practical and divine. Full of anecdotes and humor, this book makes us take an honest look at the lives of women today, and helps us to focus on what matters most. Has "liberation" truly led to greater happiness for women? Are children to be viewed as commodities, to be acquired just as we acquire a house or car? Or should children be seen as the gifts from God that they are, given to our stewardship? Dorothy makes it clear that until we rectify our confusion about such basic questions then peace of heart will elude us. To quote: We will find happiness in living out God's purpose for our lives, not our own. The culture of the early twenty-first century makes it easy to follow mistaken paths. The media bombards us with the temptation to fulfill ourselves, to find ourselves, to meet our own needs. It is a message of selfishness. And it is spread constantly. M