To be human is to be born with desires, to have wishes, and to experience longings. But not all wishes have the same quality, nature, or origin. Some wishes assume the shape of daydreams or fantasies as utopian visions enter the mind and people imagine impossibilities.

She determined that she would run off and live an ascetic life as a consecrated religious. Her problem was that her father (by the name of Paphnutius) had the necessary resources to find and reclaim her if she simply retired to a woman’s monastery.

Unlike lovely flowers in gardens, which require constant tending, “gentle dew,” and “spring breezes,” the cactus has a much stronger constitution, for it does not need these things in order to survive and thrive. Because of the toughness of the cactus, it is able to take root and flourish in an environment where nothing can grow without a struggle.

The second principle in living the simple life is: Trusting in God’s providential love. But why is it so difficult for us to trust in Divine Providence? Why is it so easy to surrender all the areas of our lives to God except for the area of finances? Because trusting in the Lord requires the understanding that His divine plan is so much larger than our own.

Why is the hippo in the haystack? Why is the chicken doing with the hammer? Caption this image! Share your child's comment below! Caption this image! What could be more fun than coloring a picture? Sharing it with someone! Why not encourage your child to send it to their grandmother? Or parish priest? Or someone they appreciate? Each week, connect with a loved one through your children’s art, and then share with us where it went! We’d love to know!

First, stop insisting that you “went wrong” with your kids. I don’t know exactly how Jesus felt when He was betrayed by Judas. But I do know this: I know that Jesus did not wonder where He went wrong with Judas. Jesus didn’t “go wrong.”

Since I am a professional historian, I am dismayed when I hear anyone say, “I hate history.” Their lament almost always means that the person is as yet unprepared to face history's challenges, the first and foremost of which is the ability to retain a great deal of data. To succeed in that undertaking, we must understand that retentiveness is a by-product of intellectual exercise.

Man by nature is idealistic, seeks excellence, and hopes for perfection, but he is bound by the weakness of human nature and the limits of the human condition. There is no such being as a faultless painter or a sinless human being. In the sport of baseball every player aspires to get a hit every time and bat 1.000, but even the best of batters only have an average of .300.

It wasn’t until she was almost two, and I was expecting our second child that the first symptoms appeared. Night terrors would wake her, screaming and crying. At first we thought she was unsettled because a new sibling would be arriving soon and that because her father would be going on a remote assignment without us for a year

I was asked to write an essay about the book that had most changed my life. This book was my answer. Relating the account of Denton’s ordeal as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for nearly eight years, it is clear that his struggle to practice his faith and keep his sanity during this time were beyond heroic.

Students should accomplish a substantial amount of academic work in the 10th and 11th grades. They have over-come the adjustment problems they may have encountered in 9th, and have not ...

Download this 'The Days of Creation' Word Puzzle! A fun activity to for all ages! Search for these words: nothing, light, sky, ocean, plants, sun, moon, birds, man, rested, Paradise, Abel, Cain

What is the bear laughing about? Caption this image! What could be more fun than coloring a picture? Sharing it with someone! Why not encourage your child to send it to their grandmother? Or parish priest? Or someone they appreciate? Each week, connect with a loved one through your children’s art, and then share with us where it went! We’d love to know!

Excerpts from Sermon XXXVI from The Sermons of St. Alphonsus Liguori, TAN Books and Publishing Children are More than Presents God gives children to parents not that they may assist ...

My father, an accomplished carpenter, always seemed to be building “one more bookcase” to meet the literary demands of his wife. For all the things that our large Catholic family did not have, we had a treasury of books. My mother’s consummate genius in homeschooling pedagogy reached its zenith with a simple rule for her children: you can stay up as late as you want as long as you are reading.

Our Featured Families are as varied as you can imagine! What they hold in common though is a love of God and family and a passion for transmitting the Faith to their children. We are so appreciative that they have welcomed us into their homes to share in their homeschooling adventure!

There’s a new book that is especially relevant for Catholic home schooling youth. What makes this story of St. Philomena even more remarkable is that it is written by a thirteen-year-old girl, the age of our young saint when she was martyred.

According to proverbial wisdom, “When you do succeed, the chances are that you were not trying too hard in the first place.” This observation appears to contradict the idea of ...

by Kerry Costanzo | Homeschooling is not easy. It can be really hard. For me, it is often really, really hard. Yet, it is the right things to do in life that can sometimes be the hardest. Homeschooling can be a cross, yet as we Catholics know, it is only in picking up and carrying our crosses that we can hope to follow Our Lord to Heaven.

Ten years ago, our family embarked on a journey which entailed leaving our comfortable life in Northern Virginia to live a life of simplicity in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. And ...