- By Melannie Svoboda SND
On August 24th we celebrated the feast of St. Bartholomew (Nathaniel), one of the apostles. The short gospel story for the feast always intrigues me (Jn. 1: 45-51). Philip has met Jesus and has accepted Jesus’ invitation to “Come follow me.” He runs off to find his friend Nathaniel and
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
The virtue of hope makes a difference in our lives. If we have hope, we will think and act differently from those who have little or no hope. The essence of hope is the firm conviction that a better world is possible. Hope is rooted in the promises of Jesus:
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
Jesus said a lot of things in the Gospels. But sometimes we get so used to hearing or reading them, we can take them for granted. Or we can forget their “shock value.” One way to reclaim the power and significance of what Jesus said, is to rewrite some of
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
As most of you know, I love to write. In fact, I wrote my first “novel” in third grade. I wrote it by hand in a big red tablet with yellow pages. It was three pages long. But today I’m not going to talk about my writing. I’m going to
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
While I was on retreat two weeks ago, I meditated on Jesus’ temptations in the desert. All three synoptic gospels tell the story. For this meditation, I used a marvelous book a good friend recommended to me: Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories by Debie Thomas, a columnist for
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
Many years ago, I had a retreat director who, at the beginning of every conference, read one of the prayers we say during Mass. Not the BIG prayers like the penitential rite, the Gloria, or the Eucharistic Prayers, but the small prayers–like the collect, the prayer over the offerings of
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
Ordinarily, it is people who adopt pets. But this is the story of a dog who adopted some people… Scout was a stray mutt staying at the county Animal Shelter in Bellaire, Michigan. The staff guessed he was about 10 years old and he had been abused. He had BB
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
Sometimes when we think of the word “holiness,” we picture a cloistered nun kneeling in chapel for prolonged hours, or St. Damien ministering to the lepers on Molokai, or St. Teresa of Kolkata tending to a dying man in the street. In other words, we tend to equate holiness with
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
Last year The Washington Post ran an article entitled “13 Parents Share the Best Reasons to Have Children” by Alyssa Rosenberg. Since I have no children of my own, I was interested in what these experts (actual parents) had to say. Though they all work in some capacity at The
- By Melannie Svoboda SND
These past few months I have been working on a new book based on this blog, “Sunflower Seeds.” When I began this project, I prayed to our Creator God for assistance. Here is an adaptation of that prayer for anyone beginning a new endeavor–whether it’s hosting a family get-together, planning
