News - September 2024 RSS Feed

Greetings to you in the healing, hope, and joy that we can only find in Jesus! The season of summer is a time to celebrate abundance … abundant sunshine, limitless produce from our gardens, and an assortment of delicious fruits from strawberries to apples and everything in between. The nature of summer shouts abundance.

I’ve been praying and trying to get closer to God. But sometimes I don’t know if what I’m thinking is actually God’s voice or if it is just my own thoughts. Is there any way that I can tell?

“... And only where God is seen does life truly begin,” said Pope Benedict XVI. “Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know him and to speak to others of our friendship with him.”

In the July 2021 issue of The Northern Cross, I wrote about a short book entitled “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age,” from the University of Mary. The book argued that cultures and societies have a prevailing vision.

Here is a little Catholic Theology 101: We don’t know much about heaven, and even if we did, we could not comprehend it anyhow, but we do know that heaven is a state of being in full and complete union with God. We will not lose our identity, we are not assumed into God, but we will be in complete union with him.

When my husband and I settled in Duluth nearly 40 years ago, we noticed how close the community and families were. We moved into a neighborhood near our church and were surrounded by other Catholic families. Most of these families had children the same age as our kids.

Rob Gannucci said his son Paul, 21, had talked for quite a while about receiving his first Communion, but he and his wife Annette were not sure quite how to go about it. What’s straightforward for most parents and their children was not for Paul, who was born with a genetic disorder called Noonan Syndrome.

Last month, the Catholic Extension Society named the finalists for its prestigious 2024-25 Lumen Christi Award, and among the finalists is the nominee from the Diocese of Duluth, Benedictine Sister Lisa Maurer of St. Scholastica Monastery.