by Dr Kalpakgian | By giving Curdie “some” of the truth Irene led him to “all” of it. By giving Curdie time and being content to be misunderstood for a short period, Irene led her friend to the fullness of the truth. To be a messenger like Irene is to speak the simple truth and let God do the rest.

by Monica McConkey | Lent is a great opportunity to refocus our efforts to draw closer to Jesus. Although we can certainly give up a few of our favorite things, we can also add extra prayers and sacrifices. It’s easy to lose focus or momentum throughout the 40 days of Lent. We can get discouraged when we falter or fail our Lenten promises. Sometimes a tangible way of tracking our progress can motivate us to stay on track or even return to it!

by Fr. Robert Skeris | The Gospel of the eight Beatitudes is surely one of the best-loved passages in all of Holy Writ, and deservedly so. For the fact is that men of all climes and times have regarded the Beatitudes as the ladder, so to speak, or the staircase by which the saints ascend to Heaven.

by Liz Beller | As a new stay-at-home mom, I’ve been going through a lot of adjusting. Since when did staying at home all day leave me with less time than I had before?

by Jennifer Tutwiler | These days, the measure of good parenting seems to be how care-free and enjoyable an existence we have enabled for our children. Children are expected to play with their toys, play outside, play with their friends, play sports, play with video games... and yet today’s children are some of the most behaviorally challenged in human history.

by Kerry Costanzo | I love the poem, "The Beautiful Hands of a Priest," and I began thinking the other day about how one could write a similar reflection on the hands of mothers. While a mother’s hands do not share the dignity of those of a priest, they nevertheless have their own special value.

One of the ends of marriage is the procreation and education of children. Procreation has gotten a good deal of attention in the recent history of the Church, but education is often of less interest.

by Kerry Costanzo | Let's face it. In this kids-eat-your-treats-and-break-your-things world, it's every mom for herself. How many of you moms out there have faced this scenario: It's 11 PM at the end of another homeschooling day.

by Ginny Seuffert | Master educator, John Taylor Gatto, abandoned the New York City government school system in the early 1990’s stating that he was not longer willing to “hurt children.” He has devoted his life since then to articulating a different vision of education that turns children into lifetime learners.

by Mitchell Kalpakgian | Listening to the talk shows on television every night, watching athletic events all day Saturday and Sunday, and spending hours on the Internet do not organize the day, deserve priority, or require the discipline of will power. They do not breathe life, nourish the mind, or lift the soul. A person does not need more time to do these essential things but a greater desire to do first things first.

by John Clark | This Christmas, I prayed to God: “I know that there are certain and special ways in which you want me to spiritually advance this Christmas. Please show me what they are.” During late December of last year, I read John Janaro’s book, Never Give Up: My Life and God’s Mercy, and I believe that this book was part of the answer to my prayer.

by CCC | It seemed like an ordinary lunch hour for a Legal Clerk in her mid-twenties, even working for a Supreme Court Justice. Yet the normal lunchtime banter with her Boss somehow took a turn for the extraordinary. Soon, they were engaged in a discussion on the Catholic Dogma of Mary as the Immaculate Conception.

by Mitchell Kalpakgian | The whole episode made no sense to him, and he was at a loss for some possible explanation for his great frustration. The only comfort his mind offers is the knowledge that the accident was not a great tragedy. He acknowledges with gratitude the escape from other “torments and evils to which even this wasted wine would have seemed a wretched jest.”

by Mary Kay Clark | The most important subject is religion. We are homeschooling because we want to teach Catholic values and the Catholic Faith to our children. Most homeschooling families in this country are Christian families who see that the public schools have completely eliminated religion from their classrooms.

by Thomas J. Centrella | The foundation of this country is the Constitution. It is the mind of the nation. The cornerstone of this foundation is the Declaration of Independence.

So often in human life we wonder if someone is going to call, coming to visit, or going to write us a letter. We assume that we are to expect, ...

by Heather Kerbis | A large homeschooling family seems natural to us now, but in the beginning, homeschooling was not on our radar. We were married relatively young, in our very early 20s, and assumed our children would go to the classroom for education.

Jennifer Tutwiler tried every kind of schedule there is. Her family couldn't settle into a a successful schedule - until she broke free of 5 popular myths.

By Sarah Rose | There are some things we come to appreciate more as we get older. Oftentimes, cradle Catholics may not have a deep appreciation for their faith until they experience a type of conversion in their teen or young adult years.

Pope Francis: "There is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the ‘tyranny of relativism,’ which allows everyone to create his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. But there is no true peace without truth.”