If you've been baptized, thank the Church... and other thoughts regarding my recent trip to France.

My column this week at Patheos is about the roots of faith, especially how I experience them in my own life. God loves us. Baptism confirms that love. Someone cared enough to have us baptized. And some of us have a legacy of faith that stretches back generations.

Here's an excerpt:

Jesus specifically asked his followers to make disciples of all the nations, to baptize the people they met “in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” To this day, we members of the church share in his mission, to reveal God to the very hearts that were made to receive him. Two thousand years later, that practice continues. 

I can trace my faith in Christ to the graces first imparted at my baptism. 

If you were baptized, you have someone to thank for bringing you, or leading you, to the font of life. Coming from a heritage of both French and Irish Catholic Immigrants, I have a lot of people to thank, stretching back generations. Their faith and love live on in me. 

On a recent pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, my husband and I found it marvelous to worship and pray with the international throngs of Catholic faithful at the Grotto -- where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St Bernadette, and where so many healings have taken place -- and in the shrine’s three basilicas. But Catholicism isn’t just a global faith, it is a personal faith -- the same faith that my parents offered to me when I was baptized over a half century ago, and the same faith that I have brought my children up in. 

Prior to the trip to Lourdes, I learned that my paternal grandmother’s home village was located in the south of France. Intrigued, my husband and I rented a car and explored the little town of Lembeye, where my immigrant grandmother began her life. 

As beautiful as Lourdes was, (in terms of the grandeur of being a world famous sacred destination) Lembeye was, on a personal level, just as beautiful to me. There, I entered into the Eglise de l’Assomption à Lembeye, the Church of the Assumption at Lembeye, an old 19^th century church -- the only one in town – and likely the place where my grandmother was baptized and received her first sacraments. I could not be sure, since I do not have Nana’s baptismal certificate, but this little French church might very well have been the source of my faith origins. Today I continue to reap the benefits of the faith that has been handed on to me from earlier generations.

 Read the rest.

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Among Women ReadHER 3.24.12... tap dancing, baptisms, serious stuff...

Among Women ReadHER

3.24.23

Stay informed on the HHS story...  

The War on Men
By Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online
Always on point.


Women and Religious Liberty
Kathryn Lopez interviewing Jeanne Monahan from Family Research Council on NRO
Ok, yes, giving you a double-header from Kathryn Lopez. So be it. It's worth it.


Religious Liberty, Blood Transfusions, Cigarettes, and Contraception 
By Janet Smith, PhD at National Catholic Register
Alway appreciate Dr. Smith's balanced and rational discussions of complicated subjects. Worth your time. 


Catholic Medical Association Doctors (who are women) Respond to Women Senators' Column
Posted at the Catholic Medical Association website
More worthy reading.

+++

The Pope's Apostolic Journey to Mexico and Cuba
From the Vatican website
The list of the Pope's itinerary... coming up this week!

Suitable for Sex but Not to Marry
By Meg Meeker, MD, from her blog
Dr Meeker's commentary on a recent stats about single mothers.


Can "Good Faith" Still Be Assumed?
By Elizabeth Scalia from her column at First Things
The climate for polite discourse among people who disagree is increasingly a mine field to walk through. It takes very strong people, who value the human person who is both their opponent and a child of God, to find ways to engage in debate and dialogue.  


Not Alone
By Ginny Kubitz Moyer at Random Acts of Momness
Why we cry at baptisms. Love it.


Religious Easter Ideas for Kids
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Ok, she had me at 'resurrection rolls'...


Jesus and Me: It's Personal
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Yup!


Tap Dancing Seminarian leaves Broadway for a Ministry life...

Parents: Here's Help in Preparing Your Child to Receive the Sacraments. (You can DO this!)

I love Lisa Mladinich's energy and verve when it comes to sharing the faith with children. I've endorsed her work here and elsewhere. Today, I'm asking her to share, in her own words, her latest booklet, and how it can help us prepare children for their sacraments. --Pat

Sacraments: Bridging the Gap between Heaven and Earth

“The Sacraments of Christian Initiation – Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist – lay the foundation of every Christian life.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1212)

It is very humbling to be in this particular space. I’d like to profusely thank Pat Gohn, catechist par excellence (for whom my admiration is just huge), for inviting me to offer a guest blog in celebration of my new booklet, “Be an Amazing Catechist: Sacramental Preparation” (Our Sunday Visitor, 30 pgs). Written with both parents and catechists in mind, it is a guide for teaching the sacraments of Penance, Holy Eucharist, and Confirmation accurately and vibrantly, so that both you and the children will come to a more complete appreciation for their purpose, beauty and power to transform lives.

“Sacraments are ‘powers that come forth’ from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church. They are ‘the masterworks of God’ in the new and everlasting covenant.” (Luke 5:17, 6:19, 8:46)(CCC 1116)

Teaching the sacraments can be unbelievably exciting. Consider this: The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that everything Jesus did during His public ministry announced and prepared the way for everything He would accomplish in us afterwards (CCC 1115). By coming to earth in all His divinity and taking on human form, He bridged the gap between heaven and earth. Before He ascended to heaven, He created a spiritual bridge for us by establishing the sacraments, each a vehicle for its own unique grace, to be administered by the Church.

It is well worth the effort to prepare ourselves to teach these thrilling truths to our children with sensitivity, enthusiasm and wisdom. As we pray, study, and cling to the sacraments, our lives become flooded with God’s grace.

Culled from my own experiences, research, and interviews with dedicated parents and catechists, this little guide on sacramental preparation is packed with practical, creative, and inspirational help on topics such as:

• The call to teach the Faith, and the call to conversion
• Submission to the Church’s authority and the graces that follow
• Heroes of the Faith
• Teaching reverence to children
• Lesson planning basics
• The purpose of confession
• Helping kids overcome their fear of the confessional
• Explaining the Eucharist
• Options for receiving Communion
• Confirmation preparation
• Breaking through to teens
• Nine things that confirmands should memorize
• Helping teens develop a Catholic identity
• Assessments
• The importance of reaching out to other parents 

All my booklets run $2.95 for a single copy and $17.90 for bundles of ten.

The original booklet, “Be an Amazing Catechist: Inspire the Faith of Children,” a guide to creative teaching methodologies that can be used with any religious ed curriculum, is also available in Spanish!

--Lisa Mladinich

Lisa is also the founder of Amazing Catechists. Read Lisa's weekly column at Patheos. 

The Word for the Season: grace.... the spiritual superglue that binds us to Jesus.

A Word in Season? It's grace. The gift that was wrought by the Pascal Mystery. This week's column at Patheos taps into the mystery behind the joyous smiles we find captured at First Communions, Church weddings, and other sacramental celebrations...

The photographs are trickling in to my inbox, the Facebook page, and via the mail. You know the ones: the happy faces of tender beauties in white veils, the dandy gents in ties and jackets, the Confirmandi in Sunday best, the tiny babies in satin and lacy gowns, and the new look of freshly starched collars or religious habits coming into view. I just love looking at all those smiles. They inspire me.

‘Tis the season for the fullness of Easter joys found in the sacraments that tend to fill up the weekends in May and June. From the Baptisms and First Communions, to the Confirmations, Ordinations, and Marriages… It’s enough to get us choked up, or pushing back wistful tears.

We delight in wiggly babes being sprinkled, doused, or immersed, just as much as try to take in the joy of someone receiving their Lord in Holy Communion for the first time. We stand in quiet awe witnessing the professions of faith, the anointings, and the taking of vows to love, honor, and serve God, and one another. Even the most cynical can momentarily suspend reservations for the sake of the loved one who invited them to come to church for the celebration… reminding us that hope is something we all can intuit, even if in tiny glimpses.

Sacraments make up the treasured memories of life, the good times that sing out the Good News. They are reminders of the mystery of grace… the gift of God’s Love made visible. The intangible Presence becoming known.

The Something More we secretly hope for and yearn for is Right Here.

To me, these are most hopeful signs of a new springtime… the outpouring of grace is flowing somewhere right now from the Seven Sacraments even as we behold this moment.

Grace is the spiritual superglue that binds us to Jesus Christ -- the stuff of heaven that touches and transforms our mere existence into living well, regardless of our circumstances. I often try to picture it as God’s long arm reaching down to earth to hold us and buoy us along until he can draw us into an eternal embrace face to face.  

There's more here.

To Become Like Jesus... Baptism gives us a great start!

My Patheos column, A Word in Season, looks ahead to Sunday's Gospel about the Baptism of the Lord, and what our own baptism means...

In baptism we have the potential and the power of grace to imitate Christ. Why? Because Christ's very life is in us. God has taken up residence in us. Not only that, we grow in that living intimacy of God-in-us whenever we receive the Eucharist.

The work of Christian life is to become like Jesus—to become, in full adult measure and stature, our truest selves, modeling Christ, while maintaining our unique personhood and distinctive qualities.

It is a calling, and we are called, each of us, by name.

As always, there's more, here.

What's in a Name?

In this Sunday's First Reading from Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41, we see the Apostles, who are grateful that they were worthy to suffer for the Name. 


Here's a snippet:

The name of Jesus in Hebrew means “God saves.”  The name announces both his identity and his mission. It was indeed, Jesus’ mission to save humanity from its sins.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church further describes the name in CCC 432:

The name “Jesus” signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation, so that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved [Cf. Acts 4:12; 9:14; Jas 2:7.]“

Just as the name of Jesus announces his identity and mission, the name of “Christian” should announce our own identity and mission.  This starts with Baptism.

Read the rest of my latest article in the Embracing the Catechism series over on Today's Catholic Woman. 

This ain't no Stevie Wonder song... Signed, Sealed & Delivered!

No, it's my latest over at Faith and Family Live!