Because the Beggar Just Might Be an Angel

-Feast of St. Marian 

This morning it is raining in my neck of the woods. It was accompanied by thunder and lightning, and yet it was a gentle and warm rain. As I was pulling into the parking garage, I noticed the trolley bus was pulling up to the stop outside. Good, I thought. I won’t have to walk in the rain.

But as it turns out, this particular bus driver is one of the impatient ones. As I was walking towards the exit of the garage, he motored off. Truthfully, I didn’t think much of this because I usually walk up to the office anyway. I just opened up my umbrella and kept on going, like the fellow in Merle Keller's painting here.

Because A Reader Asks A Question I Cannot Answer

Dear Readers: The post "God Takes Care of Little Ones with Guardian Angels" from last spring is the most widely read of all the posts on our site. Yesterday, a reader asked a question I (Allison)  have not been able to answer, despite struggling overnight with it. I'm republishing my post, along with her question in the hopes that someone with more wisdom than I can answer.

For Our Lady, "The Terror of Hell"

—Feast of St. Agatha 

Jesus, the God-Man, said that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. Well, what follows is the story of another human being whose faith is the size of a mountain, if not boundless. As a result, she can clean the Devil's clock like it's nobody's business.

I think it was when I was in RCIA that I first heard that the reason Lucifer revolted and started the war in heaven was because he got wind of what God intended to do. You know, become a human being. Or as the Holy Spirit says,

The Kings (A Few Words For Wednesday)

Here is a late-breaking poem for the day. I stumbled upon it while combing through my favorite on-line library. There is all kinds of undiscovered treasure lurking in the books there. Just waiting for you to break out your torch and look around.

Ever feel like being a Catholic Christian is a battle? Sure you do, because we were never promised a rose garden, right? This poem may  either scare you straight or help you see the light. Written by Louise Imogen Guiney, my inner (and outer) warrior read this and my compass headed to true north once again.

Because of Ferrell, My Guardian Angel

I "met" Julie Cragon a few weeks ago when I stumbled onto her blog, Hand Me Down Heaven. She is a married mother of six and runs a large Catholic bookstore in Nashville, the same store her parents ran when she was in college. We talked about her writing a guest post for YIM Catholic. When she discovered after she'd  finished her post that I, too, had just written about Guardian Angels, Julie worried we'd have to postpone hers. To me, this is just another way God makes connections.

Guest Post by Julie Cragon
A couple of years ago, a few of us at the bookstore were having a conversation a couple about Guardian Angels. Catholic bookstore, spiritual conversations, pretty normal.  I recounted something my mother had passed on to her eight children. She had told us if we said the Guardian Angel Prayer five times before going to sleep, our protector's name would come to us the next day. The employees and I laughed about the idea, but thought we would give it a try.

God Takes Care of Little Ones with Guardian Angels

Over the past day, we've had a crisis in our home, a crisis of epic dimensions with which anyone with a school-aged child is familiar: our son lost his homework.

Now, this wasn't just any piece of homework. It was a book project in 12 sections. Our 10-year-old read a biography of Hank Aaron, not a kids' book, but  a book for adults that he found on my husband Greg's bookshelves.