A little more than a year ago, the Sacred Heart started pushing its way back into my consciousness. I wasn’t seeking it; I didn’t really understand why it was suddenly front and center. All I knew was that the Sacred Heart would no longer be ignored. I found myself saying novenas, saving images I found online, and repeating the prayer, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.” I even drove up to O’Connor’s Church Goods in Latham to pick up a few of the plastic covered Sacred Heart badges that my mom and grandfather always had in their wallets. I’ve got one tucked in my wallet now.

Soon after, I was digging through some files at home and pulled out a card with my mother’s handwriting on it. Since she’s been gone for more than 38 years, that’s a pretty moving thing for me. It was her Apostleship of Prayer card, with an image of the Sacred Heart on both sides. The card sits on my desk now, next to a small crucifix, a daily reminder of both my mother and the Sacred Heart that binds us to each other across time and space.

To be honest, after last year’s brief-but-intense period of prayer and interest in the Sacred Heart, it faded into the background a bit, only to re-emerge last month with even stronger force. Obviously, this is not something I am supposed to move to the background. Over and over, the Sacred Heart was front and center everywhere I turned — in a book on spiritual poverty I had been asked to “blurb,” at a workshop someone suggested I attend, in the spiritual reading I picked up for retreat planning. Even as my interest and spiritual curiosity increased, however, I felt something holding me back.

The portrait we had at home.

The old-style devotions to the Sacred Heart often felt cloying or quaint to me, something that didn’t seem to have a place in the prayer practices that feel most powerful for me now. But then I happened upon the medieval Nuns of Helfta during a retreat day at Dominican Retreat and Conference Center and came face-to-face and heart-to-heart with the deep mystical tradition that gave rise to this devotion.

Pope Francis, in his last encyclical, referenced the Nuns of Helfta and focused on the heart of Jesus as it pertains to our contemporary world. “Let us turn, then, to the heart of Christ, that core of his being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfillment to which humanity can aspire,” he wrote in ‘Dilexit Nos,’ (He Loved Us). “There, in that heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and learn how to love.”

As always, it all comes back to love, whether we are praying to the Sacred Heart of Jesus specifically, reading the words of saint and mystics, reflecting on the Gospels, or receiving the Eucharist — Jesus broken and given for each one of us out of sheer love.

“Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that ability to love has been definitively lost,” Pope Francis wrote in 2024.

In a world seemingly “lost” to hate, division and violence, the Sacred Heart shows us the way forward on the path of love. It’s not an easy path, as evidenced by the crown of thorns that surround the Sacred Heart, but it is a path where love always has the final word.

This column originally appeared in the June 11, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.

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With the memory of our beloved Francis still fresh in our minds, Catholics opened their hearts anew to Pope Leo XIV, joyful over his backstory and his roots in Chicago, moved by his work as a missionary and bishop in Peru, impressed by the many languages he speaks. As he offered his blessing to those in person and watching via TV or some other screen, we could all feel a sense of awe that the Holy Spirit continues to work so powerfully in our Church, giving us what we need at just the right moment in time.

Of course, within hours, there were critics trying (fairly desperately, it seemed) to “dig up” some dirt on the new pontiff, attempting to tarnish the shine before we even had a chance to soak up the joy of the moment. I remember when Francis was first named pope and I wrote a blog post about my hope and excitement, another writer immediately came after me claiming I was turning a blind eye to his flaws. Our pope — every pope — is human. Of course there will be flaws, but how about we take a breath and watch and listen before we judge and criticize. It’s the American way to tear down, especially on social media these days, but we Catholics would be wise to pause and pray rather than join the fray.

The day Pope Leo XIV was elected, my husband, Dennis, who is executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, was interviewed on Capital Region television regarding the breaking news. At the end of the conversation, the interviewer asked if he thought Pope Leo was “more of a liberal or a conservative under the umbrella of Catholicism.” He responded with a reminder that Catholics are not so easy to categorize, as we do not fit any label. “The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ don’t really work as much when it comes to the Church … We are very liberal on some issues, like immigration, and very conservative on others, like abortion,” he explained. “I think he’ll be a Catholic, rather than a liberal or conservative.”

I loved that statement because it is a reminder that we are not a Church of “sides,” but rather one that is literally “universal” in its reach, its mission, its makeup. We are, in a sense, a Church of both/and, not either/or.

When I think back over the popes of my lifetime, I have loved each one of them for different reasons. Born under John XXIII, I love the fact that I was a child of Vatican II. John Paul II was the rockstar pope of my teens, and when I saw him at Madison Square Garden in 1979, you’d think I was waiting for the Beatles to appear. Pope Benedict XVI was a favorite for entirely different reasons, and if you haven’t read his beautiful and accessible encyclicals, they are worth your time even all these years later. When Francis was named pope, I practically swooned with joy, and I could not imagine another pope would so quickly fill me with hope and excitement for our Church. And then along came Leo XIV, whose first words out on the balcony of St. Peter’s made me declare: It’s a great day to be a Catholic!

We don’t know what’s coming. We never do. But we trust in the work of the Spirit and the wisdom of our new pope to guide us through whatever is ahead. After all, this pope is one of us, and if a kid from the South Side of Chicago can become pope, anything is possible with God.

This column originally appeared in the May 14, 2025 issue of The Evangelist.

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Why do you remain a Catholic?” That was the challenge issued to me on Facebook a while back. Never one to refuse a good challenge, I pondered that question anew even though I had wrestled with it before in relation to various crises in the Church, particularly the sex abuse scandal. Why do I stay? I had originally thought the new answer to that old question would be easy. But, as I reflected on it more deeply, I realized that my truth is not that simple, because it would imply that the sex abuse scandal is the only thing that makes me wonder sometimes why I stay. And, quite frankly, abuse is just one thing among many that can make this faith a challenging matter.

Don’t get me wrong. My Catholic blood runs true blue and has for all of my 53 years. I love the Church deeply, but sometimes the Church makes me crazy. You know how your family can make you crazy? Yeah, like that. There are days when I want to run away, change my address and take up a new identity. Family can do that to you, and the Church is my family, the Church is my home, and since I’ve worked for the Church for 30-plus years in one form or another, the Church is also my business. When you spend that amount of time with anything or anyone, it can sometimes make you want to run screaming from the room. And yet I haven’t run. I haven’t changed my identity. I am here, not without some fairly regular whining, but here. Firmly planted, whether I am giddy with the joy of faith or grumbling in the pain of darkness. But why? Why not walk away and be done with even the most minor frustrations? Why not find an easier path or maybe even “create my own religion,” as some tell me they have done, where I crop out the hard stuff and fill the frame with only flowers and light?

Because life is never just flowers and light, because there will always be frustrations, there will always be something to whine about, something that doesn’t go according to my plan, and I cannot imagine getting through my daily dose of drama without God ever present in my corner, without Jesus always in front of me, without the Eucharist providing food for the often difficult journey.

When the crowds around Jesus start to have trouble with some of his difficult teachings and begin walking away, he asks his closest followers if they, too, will leave.

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Peter answers. “You have the words of everlasting life.” That remains at the heart of my answer today. Always I identify with Peter, who never fails to screw up but somehow gets it on a deeper level. He doubts, he denies, he runs away, but Jesus sees through it to the faith that lives inside him. I pray Jesus can do the same with me, see through my mistakes and missteps and failures to the faith that is sometimes shaky, often lukewarm, but always present. For my entire life my faith has been the air I breathe. Like the beating heart we don’t question until it starts to fail, my faith has been beating inside me for 53 years, often without my taking the time to stop and admire its steadfast rhythm and life-giving power. Until someone asks me, “Why stay?”

Like Peter, I can only say, “To whom shall I go?” If not here, where? If not this, what? This is where Truth lives. This is the Way. This is the Word to which I cling. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega—with me, with all of us, until the end of time.

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My brief reflection from Give Us This Day earlier this week:

Whenever we take our children to Manhattan, we are confronted by the reality of “these least brothers” Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel. On subways and street corners they hold out battered cups in battered hands. Our kids look to us to gauge whether we should be doing something, and if not, why not? We tell them we can’t give to every street person. And even as we explain, we fight our own guilt over ignoring those with the least who live among those with the most.

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Click the link below to watch for yourself. My favorite part was when he asked if they spoke Spanish and they all prayed the Our Father together.

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The pope’s message and related comments from Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, are spot on, and I’m not just saying that because they affirm what I wrote in my book Walking Together: Discovering the Catholic Tradition of Spiritual Friendship or in numerous columns and articles on parenting, marriage, and life in general.

Real communication, real relationships cannot remain in the virtual world — whether we’re talking about family members living in the same house or dear friends living across the country. That important truth was at the heart of Walking Together, and it’s something we have to take seriously as digital communication rapidly replaces any and almost all face-to-face or verbal communication in our day-to-day interactions.

I can tell you that on any given day at my home office, I may “talk” to dozens of people via Facebook, Twitter, texting, and email, but I don’t actually speak or visit with anyone outside of my immediate family. And, even then, all five of us are often glued to our various screens at home. Just this afternoon Olivia, my 14-year-old, was texting me from the dressing room at H&M. I was not at home; I was standing about 20 feet away in the store. She has also been known to text me from the chair two feet away on our backyard deck. Clearly we need an intervention, so I know of what I speak.

Although virtual communication allows us to stay connected to friends and relatives who might otherwise be lost to us, real communication has to be intentional these days or it threatens to disappear into the digital void.

“Today the modern media, which are an essential part of life for young people in particular, can be both a help and a hindrance to communication in and between families. The media can be a hindrance if they become a way to avoid listening to others, to evade physical contact, to fill up every moment of silence and rest, so that we forget that ‘silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist'” Pope Francis writes in his message, “Communicating the Family: A Privileged Place of Encounter with the Gift of Love.”

Archbishop Celli, during a related presentation, added: “The risk is that I’m an expert in technology but I am not an expert in humanity. So it’s a capacity of listening, of being open, of sharing….Today fathers and mothers are involved in so many things, they are so busy, but who is teaching the kids? (Who is teaching them) to be present in a human way and to have a real dialogue, real human communication with others, if we are not teaching them?” he asked.

Back when I wrote Walking Together, I focused on the fact that our first friendships are those we share with our parents and siblings. In our childhood home we learn how to communicate — for better or for worse, and what we learn there serves as the foundation for future relationships and communication. Think of your family growing up, your family now. Is the communication method and style different? What about friendships? Do you still get together with friends in person or talk on the phone, or is it all done via email and texting and Facebook?

In the opening pages of Walking Together, I address the same problems and concerns Pope Francis raises in this year’s World Communications Day message. Here’s what I wrote back in 2010:

“The very technology that is supposed to make our lives so much easier and so much more integrated is, in actuality, cutting us off from face-to-face contact, leaving us with mostly virtual relationships that may supply superficial satisfaction but never feed our deeper need for something that touches the heart and soul.

“In some ways it would seem impossible to be isolated in this modern-day world. Even on vacation, we are usually plugged into a mind-numbing array of people, places, and social networking websites that allow us to occupy every free second of our harried lives. The problem is that despite all our ‘favorites” and ‘buddies’ out there in the land of plenty, we are hungry for real connection.”

What’s one thing you can do today to make your daily communication and connection with family and friends more meaningful, more real? I dare you to write a letter — a handwritten, on-stationery, take-it-to-the-post-office letter. Whoever is on the receiving end will be thrilled, trust me.

I’ll be talking about the importance of real and regular communication on the Morning Air Show on Relevant Radio Friday, Jan. 30, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time. In the New York metropolitan area, tune in at 1460 AM, or listen live online by clicking HERE.

For more information on Walking Together, click HERE.

For the full text of the pope’s World Communications Day message, click HERE.

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But this whole scenario has played out again and again ever since Pope Francis stepped onto that balcony. Our teachings on caring for the poor, loving others, prayer, kindness, the environment, the family, marriage, you name it are all the same as they were when Pope Benedict XVI was pope. In fact, I bet if I gave you a quiz with B16 quotes and Francis quotes you’d be hard pressed to guess which was which. Granted Pope Francis is a PR genius, and he is warm and welcoming and sort of seems like a kind old grandfather, but enough is enough. We have a lot of cool teachings that no one has bothered to read about or listen to. Until now. And only if Pope Francis says them. If you’re interested, check out my book The Complete Idiot’s Guide the Catholic Catechism. It’s chock full of shocking teachings, including our teaching evolution and how it does not contradict our faith. Go figure.

Oh, and FYI: The originator of the Big Bang theory was Jesuit priest and astronomer Georges Lemaître. File that in your back pocket for when you’re on Jeopardy or something.

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When you sign onto Facebook to check out your friend’s latest vacation photos or post a status update, you probably don’t think of it as an evangelization opportunity, but social media is fast becoming one of the most effective ways for Catholics to share their beliefs in unintimidating and powerful ways.

By providing a virtual witness through things we say, the links we post, the community we build, we draw people toward us and, by extension, the faith that sustains us.

Although I’ve been preaching the spiritual benefits of social media for a while, it was exciting to hear Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, say that it is “absolutely necessary that the Church should seek to establish a presence in the digital world.”

Archbishop Celli (in the photo above) made the comments May 22, when he was in Brooklyn to deliver the keynote address at World Communications Day and to receive the St. Francis de Sales Distinguished Communicator Award. Speaking to professionals in the communications field as well as representatives from parishes, schools and Catholic organizations, the archbishop said the Church’s mission is to “help every human being in the search for truth” and to help people, especially the young, discern which of the many messages circulating on social media and elsewhere might have meaning for their lives.

“We are always fishing in the aquarium. We forget the majority of fish are outside the aquarium,” he said, reminding all Catholics that social media offers us a unique opportunity to go beyond the walls of the “aquarium” and bring the Gospel to people who might not otherwise hear it.

Archbishop Celli stressed that we should not be “presumptors imposing our truth” on others via social media but rather friends encouraging dialogue and questions. “If we allow people to probe further, we help give a soul to the Internet,” he said, adding that “convergence” must be our hallmark—creating bonds, and speaking the truth with love.

I addressed this same topic from a different vantage point during a breakout session following the archbishop’s address. “Stealth Evangelization: How to Subtly Use Social Media to Spread the Good News” was my take on this important aspect of our universal mission. Would St. Paul have ignored 1.3 billion people on Facebook or 255 million people on Twitter? Not by a long shot. We need to see ourselves as modern-day St. Pauls, and social media as our Corinth.

As I told the men and women attending my session, avoiding social media as a Church is no longer an option. We have to meet people where they are. Social media is now part of the fabric of our everyday lives, especially the lives of young people. If it is not also part of the fabric of our faith lives, we stand to cut off many people from the beauty and power of Christ’s message.

So what would evangelization like that look like in your Facebook or Twitter world? Maybe just the occasional “share”of something Pope Francis said that day or a request for prayers for a special intention or a beautiful photo with a line from Scripture, not all the time, just now and then, and always with gentleness and warmth, openness and love.

“If the Church is not present (on social media)…we risk becoming marginal to the lives of many,” Archbishop Celli said, “and we fail in our mission to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth.”

Pope Francis recently tweeted this message to his 14 million Twitter followers: “What does ‘evangelize’ mean? To give witness with joy and simplicity to what we are and what we believe in.”

I think that’s at the heart of this subtle style of evangelization, whether we do it virtually or face to face. People are searching, but we have to be present to be found.

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“Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.“The second incorrect attitude is the temptation to limit ourselves to creatures, as if they can provide the answer to all our expectations. With the gift of knowledge, the Holy Spirit helps us not to give in to all of this…but I would like to return to the first wrong path…Custodians Creation, not Masters of Creation it is a gift that the Lord has given us, to us! We are Custodians of Creation. But when we exploit Creation we destroy the sign of God’s love for us, in destroying Creation we are saying to God: ‘I don’t like it!. This is not good!’ ‘So what do you like?’ ‘I like myself!’ – Here, this is sin! Do you see? Custody of Creation is custody of God’s gift to us and it is also a way of saying thank you to God. I am the master of Creation but to carry it forward I will never destroy your gift. And this should be our attitude towards Creation. Safeguard Creation. Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us! Never forget this!

“Once I was in the countryside and I heard a saying from a simple person who loved flowers and he nurtured these flowers and he said we must nurture these beautiful things that God has given us. Creation is for us to use well, not exploit to nurture…because do you know father, God always forgives – Yes it is true God always forgives…We men, women, we forgive sometimes – Yes sometimes we forgive, not always …But father Creation never forgives! And if you don’t custody Creation it will never forgive you.” — Pope Francis, May 21, 2014

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So, here, courtesy of Rome Reports, is the text of the pope’s message today.

A thought to ponder as you read: Have you missed Jesus on your own Road to Emmaus? I’m pretty sure I have, at least a dozen times.

From Pope Francis:

The joy of Easter is born of our faith in Christ’s Resurrection and his continuing presence in the Church and in our world. With the Resurrection, all has been made new and fresh hope has been poured out upon our world. The question which the angel asked the women on the morning of the resurrection is directed to us as well: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5).

The Gospel shows us three examples of a life changing encounter with the Risen Lord and invites us to a similar encounter. Like Thomas, we need to grasp the reality of Christ’s rising to new life. Like Mary Magdalene, we need to hear Jesus’ voice calling our name. And like the travelers on the road to Emmaus, we need to find renewed joy and hope by recognizing that the Lord is ever at our side.

These disciples sought the living among the dead, yet Jesus led them, by different paths, to faith in him and the power of his resurrection. Today he challenges each of us to seek him, the Living One, and to leave behind everything that holds us back from encountering him and sharing in the rebirth, the freedom and the hope which he alone can give.

(The photo above is a dirt road on the property surrounding the Abbey of the Genesee in western New York. Miles of empty road weaving through corn fields when the season is right. Beautiful for contemplating our life journey and our Road to Emmaus. Get thee to Genesee, if ever you have the chance.)

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