Award-winning Disney and Broadway star Lea Salonga is revealing that her Catholic past informs her approach to Christmas ahead of her performance in a PBS-televised holiday program. “As someone that grew up Catholic, I was raised to believe that Christmas was a
In a world that still celebrates Christmas but has increasingly forgotten Christ, we remind one another that “Christ is the reason for the season” and urge our fellow man to “Keep Christ in Christmas,” but the way to do so is to
As in all too many Christmases past, sobriety blankets the city of Bethlehem, where Christ's birth is jubilantly celebrated each year. The joyous preparations that typically mark the approach of the feast of the Nativity have taken on a different hue. The
Have you ever wondered about those weekday feasts between Christmas and New Year's Day? They include two martyrs—St. Stephen and St. Thomas Becket—and the Holy Infants who lost their lives to Herod’s vicious pursuit of Christ. They also include the Apostle John,
Of all the people who could have been present at the birth of Christ, God chose shepherds. Father Patrick Briscoe explains how an ancient prayer of St. Patrick, who was once a humble shepherd himself, can help us draw closer to the
"I'm feeling it every day," Keller told The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. "I sit back and look at this (diorama) and I think, 'These people were at the well, they were doing things, and 500
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Away in a cave near Greccio, Italy, St. Francis of Assisi had the first Nativity scene -- a live one -- staged for the faithful on Christmas Eve in 1223. A 15th-century fresco now decorating the cave inspired
In this world, we have no abiding city, as the book of Hebrews tells us. We move through this world as pilgrims. However, as columnist David Mills writes: “Complicating matters, though, many of us have a kind of internal Jansenist or Puritan
As rector of America’s first cathedral, Father Brendan Fitzgerald can’t wait to host an upcoming performance of perhaps the most famous oratorio ever composed: George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah.” “My hope is that somehow, someway, to host the ‘Messiah’ at the Baltimore Basilica
"Pick 1," directs a guide printed in the parish bulletin of St. Joseph Church in York, Pennsylvania. The command in the graphic is listed twice, over two columns: The first lists Mass times for the fourth Sunday of Advent, the second lists