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Category: Your Heart His Home

‘I am not a cannibal!’

It was my habit as a freshman to attend daily Mass on my university campus. As I was leaving Mass one day, I ran into the boyfriend of a friend, we’ll call him “Brian.” He was a senior — and haughty. He had hopes of becoming an evangelical minister one day and starting his own church. He was also deeply suspicious of Catholics and didn’t hesitate to attack my faith when he could.

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Taking our part in the Real Presence revival

The first time I ever walked into the Center for Catholic Studies here in Minnesota, I remember thinking, “I’d love to get a job here one day.” Two years later, after I’d finished my graduate degree, that’s exactly what happened. I served as an adjunct professor and the managing editor for “Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture” for nearly 14 years.

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Our Lady of the Rockies, pray for us in the weeds

I’d invited a group of girlfriends to join me for a mini-pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Rockies in Butte, Montana. We flew into nearby Bozeman, piled into a rental car, and about an hour later, poured out into a quirky rental — a former Baptist church basement social hall that had been remodeled for living space where we would pray our rosary together every night.

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The mission of Mary

When I was coming back into the Church in my late 20s, Mary was a bit of a stumbling block to me. I didn’t have enough education to make a distinction between worship and veneration, for example. And though I respected the Blessed Mother, I cringed at the way she had been portrayed so often: a pale, passive, perfect Madonna. I thought, there has to be more to Mary than that. Looking back, my ignorance is embarrassing.

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Love more, work less

This year, I’ve been spending some time each day with St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day we celebrate this month on the 14th. Before his martyrdom at Auschwitz (he volunteered to take the place of another in the starvation bunker) he was spiritual father to many and spent his life making his mother, “Mamuzia,” as he would refer to the Blessed Mother — that’s Polish for “Mom”— better known and loved. “To the Sacred Heart through the Immaculata,” he would say. I pray his consecration to the Immaculata every day, which begs that we be made fit instruments to draw others to the Sacred Heart.

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What dads do

I am the sixth of seven children, the fifth girl. When my mom was at the hospital delivering me, my brother, Joe, an only boy among four girls, was anxiously standing by the phone awaiting the news of my arrival and so hoping for a little brother. A boy was expected; the name “Michael” selected. It was looking to fall Joe’s way.

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