Some people like to think of life as a journey, an adventure, a pilgrimage, a blank slate, a beach, a work of art … a box of chocolates. But life isn’t always that neutral, is it? Sometimes we are dealt a rough hand from the earliest moments of our existence. Sometimes life is filled with pain and obstacles. We are free to look at life however we want, but one thing is for sure: Life is a battle, and no one gets to sit on the sidelines.

Are you “hopelessly devoted”? No, not to your crush, your boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse, but to the Most High God?

Are you struggling with the rosary? Struggling with praying the rosary? You are not alone. Many Catholics feel super guilty for not praying the rosary very much or at all.

“Feelings. Nothing more than feelings.” Thus went the 1970s ballad. As often happens, pop songs contain profound lessons if you take them out of context and give them meanings the songwriter never intended: “Yes, they’re just feelings, and nothing more. Don’t sweat it.”

Have you heard of “The Warning” (aka “The Illumination of Consciences”)?

When the Russian dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet empire in 1974, he wrote a famous exhortation to his countrymen entitled “Live Not By Lies.” Solzhenitsyn spent years doing hard labour in prison camps, survived and dared to write about his experience in The Gulag Archipelago. Not only did he write his own story, but he gathered and recounted the tragic stories of those who didn’t make it out alive.

I love hell. Let me qualify that. Hell is a great motivator, perhaps the greatest motivator. But shouldn’t love be our greatest motivation? Certainly, but hell is a great backup when we’re feeling less than virtuous.

Although I don’t feel qualified to speak to the ongoing revelations of life and death at Canada’s residential schools, I would still like to weigh in, and to express my sorrow.

Catchy slogans are fun and helpful: shorthand for complex concepts — except when they’re not.

Parents generally loathe having “the sex talk” with their children. Today they will also need to have “the gender talk.” Let me explain.