Last night I stepped outside into the bracing cold to let the dog out one last time before bed. Already, the ground glinted with heavy frost. I breathed in sharply. My nostrils burned. Instinctively, I shoved my hands deeper into my coat pockets. I looked up and waited for my eyes to adjust to the […]
Glory is a Woman Fully Alive
by on December 18, 2018 Leave a Comment
St. Irenaeus of Lyon is known for the quote, “Glory is man fully alive.” The true quote from his work, Against Heresies, is this: “Life in man is the glory of God; the life of man is the vision of God.” Growing up, I got to witness firsthand what it means for glory to be a woman […]
Labor of Pain, Labor of Love
by on December 16, 2018 1 Comment
I grew up Catholic. Not an Easter-and-Christmas Catholic. But an every-week-we-went-to-mass-and-my-great-grandmother-taught-us-the-rosary Catholic. We were Irish, loud, played bingo, had the priest over for dinner and I just assumed that everyone else lived the same way we did. I went to Catholic schools, wore the plaid skirts and knew the Stations of the Cross before I […]
The Hope for Which We Now Labor
by on December 12, 2018 1 Comment
It’s true what mothers say about forgetting the pain of childbirth. My births are now seven and nine-and-a-half years ago and I have to strain to remember the details. Giving birth is a moment we spend countless hours preparing for. It is the culmination of reading and birthing classes, showers, reordering our lives and homes, […]
Making Room for Glory
by on December 2, 2018 Leave a Comment
I keep thinking that the container matters when it comes to God’s glory. But it doesn’t. A poor, unwed Jewish girl was not a container that would have been chosen for glory. And yet she was. A place for animals would not have been a container chosen for the birth of the Glory One, and […]
