Once there was a priest—we’ll call him Father Smith—who heard that the neighboring Catholic parish had a newly-painted mural dedicated to the souls in purgatory; the pastor there commissioned it as a way of reminding his parishioners to pray on a...
Early in the 20th century a married couple in Vermont bought a farm on the slope of a mountain in a remote, largely unpopulated area. A few weeks after moving in, they decided to go exploring, and walked down the hill behind their house, across the...
St. John Paul II had one of the longest reigns as Pope in Church history; when he was elected in 1978, he became not only the first Pope from Poland, but the first non-Italian Pope in over 450 years. Most experts agree he helped change the course of...
Someone once wrote a story about what might happen if Jesus were alive in today’s world, beginning His public ministry and seeking people to be His apostles. In this story Jesus decided that taking out ads in the “help wanted” section of the...
There was a famous American painter over 100 years ago named John Singer Sargent. He spent much of his life in London, England; there he became famous for painting flattering and heroic-looking portraits of important figures in English society...
About fifteen years ago I received some unexpected junk mail: a letter from a woman in California claiming to be a psychic, offering to provide me with valuable information in exchange for a mere $25 donation. She even provided a number...
The nation of Lebanon had long been considered an oasis of beauty and peace in the war-torn Middle East, but that began changing when a civil war pitting Christians against Muslims broke out in 1975. One Christian family, consisting of the parents...
According to legend, a holy married couple in Nazareth, who had been childless for many years, was blessed with a son—and they were informed in a dream that the boy’s name was to be Joseph. They carefully raised their child in their Jewish faith...
