A few weeks ago, she suffered a very serious fall, breaking her nose. She’d gotten up in the night to use the bathroom and lost her balance. She reports her last thought before hitting the floor: “Well, this is gonna hurt.”

Later, while I was nursing her as she recovered, she sat on the couch eating tiny bits of watermelon. One piece dropped to the floor, which hadn’t been cleaned of late, and she lowered her fork to stab it. I tried to stop her and said, “Mom, you do not have to eat fruit that has fallen on the floor. Let me get you a fresh piece.” She stabbed it anyway replying, “What’s it gonna do, kill me?”

We’ve sat on her couch countless times since her diagnosis, reminiscing and thinking about what it will be like for her to meet the Lord, how blessed we are that we can spend time together and pray together. Talk things through. Laugh. One day, she paused and said, “You’re really going to miss me.” I said, “I know.” We sat quietly for a moment and then I added, “You have to promise me, though, that you will find a way to make me laugh, even from heaven.” She said, “I’ll work on that.”

Mom hasn’t been a perfect mother. Lord knows, I haven’t been a perfect daughter. (The worry I’ve caused her makes me cringe.) Like any family, we’ve had our share of arguments, hurt, estrangement, and misunderstanding, followed by rather ungraceful reconciliations. Not the sweet, choreographed Hallmark kind of reconciliation, with the lush swell of an orchestra in the background, but more awkward and bumbling, like old instruments honking slightly out of tune, and just doing our best. We’ve talked through some big hurts; others have been left untouched. It’s hard to know when revisiting a wound is simply being retraumatized by it or when it’s healing it and releasing it into the hands of the Lord.

One of the great graces of long life with your parents is that you both grow into understanding just how hard it is to be human, how easily vanity, pride, fear, or selfishness can creep up and get you in a chokehold, and how much you have to forgive and forgive and forgive—one another and yourself—and try again.

And laugh some more.

There’s one thing my mother and I hold in common in abundance: our belief in grace and mercy. It’s everywhere for the taking, for the receiving, if we can just humble ourselves enough to ask for it, to know how much we need it, to realize we cannot truly earn it. Humility is a lost virtue, but there’s nothing like facing death to remind you how much you need it and just what glorious things humility accomplishes in the soul. The startling beauty and sanctity it brings. I’m seeing it now in Mom like never before. It hums around her like a gentle lullaby.

A Full Quiver

Mom and Dad have been preparing for their deaths for literally decades and in that process, they filled out some funeral preparation sheets. Another great gift from Mom. Among other things, they preordered simple caskets made by Trappist monks, though mom was disappointed that they didn’t have one in an hourglass shape to better reflect her figure.

One of the questions in those prep sheets is: what’s your favorite childhood memory? My mom noted that hers was candlelight Mass on Christmas Eve in Orient, South Dakota, the tiny farming hamlet she grew up in during the Great Depression and drought of the 1930s.

On the vigil of the Assumption, the day my mother had requested to die, my brother, a priest, decides we’ll hold a candlelight vigil Mass at mom’s bedside. The Assumption also happens to be the anniversary of her First Communion. The air in her room feels thick with meaning and wonder as candles are lit and the cruets filled.

She is lying in bed, conscious and cogent, but so weak and vulnerable and childlike. She’s draped in her favorite white nightie that must be forty years old. She looks like an angel. My brother reminds her of her favorite memory from childhood of candlelight Mass and when she sees the candles burning at her bedside, she exclaims like a little girl, “Oh, this is the answer to my prayers!” We open with a verse of Immaculate Mary. The readings are exquisite: “David assembled all Israel in Jerusalem to bring the ark of the Lord to the place which he had prepared for it” (Chron 15:3), and “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (Cor 15: 55). Mom receives Holy Communion from the hand of her seventh-born. We finish that Mass with the Regina Coeli and tuck our mother in for the night, hovering over her, asking if she’s in pain. She isn’t. We’re all wondering if she will get her wish.

And this is another enormous grace our mother has given us: one another, seven siblings, and the chance to spend this sacred time together, each of us helping and tending and being present in our own way. My brothers work out a system to move Mom when she needs turning using a sheet beneath her. One sister holds mom’s head, another adjusts her feet and legs. There’s a count—one, two, three!—and mom lets out a little moan of gratitude. “Oh, that’s good,” she says settling into a new position.

One day we need to change the sheets and it took all of us present to do it without causing mom any pain. I’ve never been so grateful to come from a big Catholic family as now. Praying and tending with my siblings, I’ve gotten to know them better. Going through this together has been one of the greatest joys of my entire life for how it has drawn us together. I know they feel the same way. At night, we stand whispering in Mom’s kitchen, sharing one-liners we’ve heard from her throughout the day, almost giddy with how childlike she has become. At bedtime, exhausted, we drop into blow up mattresses, and mom’s hospital bed (she wasn’t comfortable in it, so we kept it for one of us in the living room). One night I take the couch, another night I get the bed. Like musical chairs, we dance around and find places to land for the night. We keep a baby monitor on her so we can see if she’s in distress. We all wake up countless times a night and check on her. One night at three in the morning, she requests a little bit of her favorite smoothie and I sit holding it for her so she can suck on the straw. My sister, a nurse, performs some of the more elaborate and unsavory services for mom at this stage. My priest brother leads us in prayers for the dying, says Mass bedside, leads the rosaries and novenas and chaplets. He arranges for Mom to have confession with a brother priest. The graces pour out, multiply. Just like her children.

Mom has requested these readings for her funeral:

When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. (John 16:21)

And, from Psalm 127

Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the sons of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has
his quiver full of them. (3-5)

Oh, Mom, your quiver is full. And I couldn’t be more grateful to be one of the arrows in it.

To Die Another Day

Mom did not get her wish to die on the Feast of the Assumption. Instead, she rallied. But there are plenty of Marian feast days forthcoming. And perhaps the Lord knows, we just need to laugh with her a while longer.

Stay tuned for Part 4 of The Wonder of Dying Well

Liz Kelly Stanchina is the community leader for Women’s Formation at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Institute. She is an internationally-recognized speaker and retreat leader and the award-winning author or co-author of more than a dozen books including Anchored by Hope: Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul, A Thrill of Hope, the Blessed is She Advent Devotional for 2024, A Place Called Golgotha: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ, Love Like a Saint: Cultivating Virtue with Holy Women, and Jesus Approaches, What Contemporary Women Can Learn about Healing, Freedom & Joy from the Women of the New Testament. Kelly’s written works frequently appear in the Magnificat’s Lenten and Advent Companions, as well as Blessed is She, Shalom Tidings, and other Christian forums. Kelly holds advanced degrees in Creating Writing from the University of Alaska, and Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. From 2008 to 2022, she served as the managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture at the Center for Catholic Studies in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she also taught in the Catholic Studies program at the University of St. Thomas. Kelly has appeared on Relevant Radio, Catholic Answers, The Christophers, Radio Maria, Radio Maria Australia, Public Radio, Boston Catholic Television, EWTN, and Salt and Light Television, Canada. She is a two-time cancer survivor and has lived with multiple sclerosis for two decades. She gives all glory to God that she can still work and flourish in her faith and ministry. Visit her website at LizK.org.

As terrible as it is to see my mother suffering with this, I have come to treasure changing her dressing. There’s a whole rhythm to it: first, wash your hands, second, cut two long strips of adhesive tape, third, prep the new dressing materials, and on it goes. Something about the process comforts me. It brings order and control into a situation completely out of our control. And, tending that wounds feels incredibly sacred.

Maybe because, while changing her dressing, I can’t help but think of the wound at Christ’s side. Mom’s wound is situated in a remarkably similar place to the wound at Christ’s side. And Christ’s wound remained open, even after Resurrection, and we know what that did for the doubting St. Thomas. Perhaps Mom’s wound is open for an equally important conversion for someone nearby. Maybe me. There’s nothing quite like caring for two elderly parents in serious need to reveal your own selfish preoccupations. It keeps you praying that your life is well-ordered, spent on things that truly matter.

I’ve written elsewhere about the importance of our woundedness. (See, To Witness, We Must Have Our Wounds.) There are many wise voices within the Church that remind us of the import of Christ’s open side for St. Thomas. The fact that after the Resurrection, Jesus still possessed his earthly body, complete with open wounds, is an astonishing thought that I find bears great fruit in meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. It certainly points to the importance of our earthly bodies. I wonder about this wound on my mother. Will it remain in heaven somehow? Will it be glorified? What might a glorified wound look like?

The body is a wondrous and difficult gift.

“May I speak to the Death Department?”

About the only anxiety or, more curiosity, my mother has at this point is, “when will I die?” That seems pretty human to me. She asks the hospice nurse for hints. The nurse, who is lovely, says, “I’m so sorry I can’t help you with that.” Mom gives her her best version of “the stink eye,” and we all laugh.

Mom would prefer to die on a Marian feast day. She has made literally thousands upon thousands of rosaries that she has sent to missions all over the world. She has prayed at least one rosary each day, if not more, for decades. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the Blessed Mother were to escort her home on one of her feast days.

We discuss options. I say, “Well, Mom, it can’t be the feast of the Assumption or the Coronation because I’m speaking in other states on those days, but Our Lady of Sorrows, September 15, would be an option.” My brother, a priest, prefers October 7, Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. I like that idea. Mom is a little less enthusiastic—it seems too far away.

I cannot imagine what it will be like to meet the Lord face-to-face, but I’m equally wonderstruck by the idea that soon my mother will meet her Heavenly Mother. What a greeting that will be. I hope heaven has “playback” options.

Thank you to so many who are praying for my mother. She is at peace, complains of virtually no pain, and has been a funny, delightful patient every step of the way. Please pray that if it’s the Father’s will, I will be there, along with my six siblings and Father, when Mom leaves us. That would be a tremendous gift.

Liz Kelly Stanchina is an internationally-recognized speaker and retreat leader and the award-winning author or co-author of more than a dozen books including Anchored by Hope: Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul, A Thrill of Hope, the Blessed is She Advent Devotional for 2024, A Place Called Golgotha: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ, Love Like a Saint: Cultivating Virtue with Holy Women, and Jesus Approaches, What Contemporary Women Can Learn about Healing, Freedom & Joy from the Women of the New Testament. Kelly’s written works frequently appear in the Magnificat’s Lenten and Advent Companions, as well as Blessed is She, Shalom Tidings, and other Christian forums. Kelly holds advanced degrees in Creating Writing from the University of Alaska, and Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. She received her certification as a spiritual director in 2015 from the Cenacle of Divine Providence, Clearwater, Florida, in association with Franciscan University in Steubenville. From 2008 to 2022, she served as the managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture at the Center for Catholic Studies in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she also taught in the Catholic Studies program at the University of St. Thomas. Kelly has appeared on Relevant Radio, Catholic Answers, The Christophers, Radio Maria, Radio Maria Australia, Public Radio, Boston Catholic Television, EWTN, and Salt and Light Television, Canada. She is a two-time cancer survivor and has lived with multiple sclerosis for two decades. She gives all glory to God that she can still work and flourish in her faith and ministry. Visit her website at LizK.org.

As we strolled through the aisles this past May, my mom, though 92 and, as she does every year, suddenly became like a child. She cooed and gasped with wide-eyed wonder, stopping before every flower and reaching for it to pet it with tender awe. “Look at the color on this one!,” she’d say, and then run her fingers over the velvety petals of a deep purple petunia. “Oh, and look at the pattern on this one!” This time, she’d caress the leaf of a Persian shield, named for the ways it mimics a Persian warrior’s shield with purple, blue-green metallic sheen. On we’d go to bright Gerber daisies, saturated pink dahlias, and the ruffle-edged dianthus. Down the next aisle to find fiery celosia, the sweet pea, luscious begonias, and cheery bacopa. She’d hover over every flower as though it were the last one on earth and say, “How could anyone doubt there’s a God when there’s so much beauty?”

We fill the cart. Pinks and purples, reds and whites. She wants me to take at least one of everything, but I don’t have enough dirt for that. She insists on paying despite my protests. Then, we carefully load her back into my car along with the flowers and head to the ice cream shop where she buys a dollar ice cream cone (she gets the senior discount) and again, she refuses to let me pay. The car smells like spring and dirt and flowers and ice cream. She crunches on her ice cream cone, careful to hold it without spilling, holds it with those same dear fingers that could not resist petting the petunias.

This May was special. I cried much of the way as I drove to pick up my Mom. I was painfully aware: it will probably be our last annual-flower-shopping outing. Mom has stage four cancer. And while she has defied every prognosis so far, something is different now. Even she says, “I feel like the clock has actually started ticking.”

91 and Unafraid

Nearly two years ago she was diagnosed with a very aggressive nodular melanoma, always lethal. I was with her at the first visit to the oncologist who specializes in this kind of cancer. His name is Jesus, which we love. We make jokes about her making appointments with Dr. Jesus.

He entered quietly and sat down. We liked him immediately. He was soft-spoken and gentle. Reverent. The first words out of my Mom’s mouth? “I’m 91 and I’m not afraid.” I don’t imagine Dr. Jesus hears this very much. A warm-hearted smile spread across his face.

We talked through the options, the prognosis (a few months? maybe a year?), what the future might look like. Mom wanted no treatment, at least none that would make her sick. We gathered up business cards and pamphlets on radiation, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery and all the rest and stuffing them all into a folder, we left Dr. Jesus, Mom smiling and at peace the whole time.

Time went by. Months and then a year, then another year. Dr. Jesus remarked, “Well, you have the laziest most aggressive cancer I’ve ever seen.” The doctors were amazed. Mom showed virtually no symptoms at all. No spread, no pain, nothing.

But eventually, it seemed to “turn on.” The cancer spread to her lungs, her spine, her adrenal glands. And yet, she remained completely herself, funny as ever. She had no pain, no trouble breathing, no real symptoms of note except that she was tired. Very tired. I’d bring her her favorite sausage quiche, occasionally a chocolate ice cream cone, and fresh flowers. We’d arrange the flowers on the floor next to the couch where she would rest much of the day. This way she could see them and admire them, and wonder at the delicacy of a rose petal, or the pattern in my glorious can-can peonies, my white irises that she says reminds her of angels’ wings.

She asked me to order her the classic tome, The Art of Dying Well by St. Robert Bellarmine, the large print edition. But the English translation was rather stilted and didn’t speak to her. So I perused its pages. He opens with sage wisdom: if you want to die well, you need to live well and die to the world. Mom could have written that part.

She and my Dad have spent the last years of their lives praying together at least two hours a day while becoming great grandparents. In between that, they’ve been donating money to have churches and wells built in Africa, supporting missions, and meeting the needs around them that present themselves. Recently, they bought a humble country priest a new truck when his dilapidated wreck finally bit the dust. It was used, of course, but it was the same model truck the priest had been driving and he was beyond thrilled to have new wheels, especially since he oversaw numerous parishes many miles from one another in a state where weather could be deadly.

My parents have never been materialistic and it’s no surprise to me that they hold their blessings with loose and generous hands.

But I think what moves me most about this season is Mom’s childlike trust and wonder. She is alive with it. We’ve had several long and delightful conversations about the reality that soon, she will see God face-to-face. Soon, she will meet the Blessed Mother and what a meeting that will be since Mom has made literally thousands of rosaries that she’s sent to missions around the world. Soon, she will be in the presence of all Truth, all Love, all Goodness and the Creator of this worldly beauty she appreciates so much. She says things like, “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I can hardly wait!” (Mom, I’m pretty sure your time in purgatory is going to be brief if you spend any time there at all.)

And this: she is at peace. Not because she’s never made a mistake in her life, not because she’s perfect. Not because she thinks she deserves heaven and eternity spent in love and beauty. But because she trusts in the Father’s goodness and love so much. She swims in the wonder of his mercy. It makes so plain to my heart: when I lose my wonder for the world the Father has created, it means I lose my wonder in him. Childlike faith has nothing to do with immaturity, naivete, or irresponsibility. Childlike wonder looks at the world and sees the Father’s hand at work in everything—everything, the purple petunia and the painful bits. Mom has been telling me since I was young, God uses everything, he will bring good from everything, even suffering. She has been, of course, absolutely, abundantly right.

Mom’s faith in heaven does not diminish her experience in this world; it gives it ultimate meaning. And she’s not wasting a moment.

There is grace and so much wonder in these sacred days, O, Lord, let us be awake to all of it understanding it is only a glimpse of Your glory. Amen.

Stayed tuned for The Wonder of Dying Well: Part 2

Liz Kelly is the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Place Called Golgotha. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org.

I didn’t know what “cable tv” was until high school and even then, my parents wouldn’t allow it for the smut it would bring into our house. I know, I was a blessed kid in just about every sense a kid can be blessed. I know there are parents out there who would love to provide parks for their own children and may not be in a position to do that.

And, I get it; it’s a different time and I’m a fat old lady pushing 60. Technology can offer us many amazing benefits, like internet connection around the world, advancements in medicine that have vastly improved and even lengthened my own life with MS and cancer. I was able to fly to Australia and speak and lead retreats for weeks because of aeronautics. I can send a picture of the gorgeous quiche I made this morning with the eggs I got from my brother’s chickens and the basil and tomatoes I grew in the yard, to my sister a thousand miles away with the promise to make one for her when she visits—just for fun. There’s a great deal to be said for technology.

But electric bikes? That one, I don’t get.

“The legs feed the wolf, gentlemen.” ~ Herb Brooks, coach to the USA Hockey Team, Olympic Gold Medalists, 1980, Lake Placid

I can still ride a bike, thank the Lord. I work hard to maintain strength in my legs, because once the legs go, especially for the MS patient, the rest of the body often follows suit. I’ve been reading specifically about leg muscles, your quads, the glutes, the largest muscle in your body and how strength in your legs not only improves physical health, but cognitive function as well, neurological health. I thank God I can still peddle.

So when my neighbors at the end of our cul-de-sac bought their very young boys electric bikes, and then proceeded to let them ride, back and forth, back and forth, at breakneck speed and often without helmets and sometimes with passengers, up and down our little street, my heart sank. I can understand an electric bike for someone whose legs can no longer peddle, or someone who has to go a long distance and cannot make it without a little electrical boost. I imagine one day I might need an electric scooter or some such and will be enormously grateful to have it. I can even understand a motorbike for someone doing moto-cross at a field designed for such activity. And I know, boys like to go faster and jump higher. (So do girls.)

But an electric bike? For these healthy, young boys? One of whom has spent any number of times proudly proclaiming how he won the barefoot waterskiing contest last summer and planned to do so again this summer? Aren’t you just shooting him in his little bare foot? Something about the e-bike smells a touch disordered to me.

It’s bad enough the number of adults zooming past me riding electric bikes on the bike path, often without helmets, going dangerous speeds amidst pedestrian traffic. The newspapers are filled with accounts of accidents with electric bikes to blame, serious, life-threatening accidents. So what’s at stake here? Is it just another new toy that is being marketed and packaged such that the young, healthy boy just has to have one? Is it just another money-making behemoth that once it becomes better regulated will fade into history replaced by the next, newer, shinier toy that will make someone a lot of money?

Does that smell funny to anyone else?

To any parents considering the purchase of an electric bike for their child: the legs feed the wolf, my friend. Let your child feel the tremendous satisfaction of getting somewhere on their own power, walking, running, peddling a bike, hiking a hill, swimming across the lake, skiing down a mountain. Don’t be too quick to rob them of the very activity that will strengthen the neurological connections in their brains and remind them that the body is a gift, a gift to be enjoyed and stewarded, a wondrous gift worth tending, protecting, pushing at times, and celebrating at others—no matter what condition it may be in.

We may have made many advances in technology as a species, but we’ll never outdo God in creating the human person. Never. Even as we’re trying to copy his majesty in petri dishes. We’ll never be able to outdo the unspeakable creative power of giving life ex nihilo. Let’s teach our young people about that, about the body as gift, and then take them for a hike.

Liz Kelly is the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Place Called Golgotha. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org.

She would bring him to the back left corner of the church, where my husband and I usually sit. She would park her companion on the aisle and then sit next to him, leaning in, whispering parts of the Mass to him, it seemed, and tending to any need he might have. At the exchange of peace, she would kiss him with such tenderness, it pierced my heart. He was covered in blankets and had tubes running here and there. His eyes were most often closed, but he could, it appeared, move his arms and hands, as well as speak. Some weeks he seemed more animated and responsive than others. Still, they came.

When it came time to approach for Communion, I noticed, she insisted on rolling this gentleman up in his reclining convertible wheelchair to receive the Blessed Sacrament directly from the hand of our priest. I had a sense that she wanted to bring him to the Eucharist, to do whatever it took to bring him forward—rather than having the Eucharist brought to him. Maybe it was something about providing a more normal experience to her companion, helping him enter into the community like everyone else, making him feel a part. I don’t know, but her devotion in this regard, and in all the ways that she tended to him, were deeply moving. I found myself thinking of them long after Mass had ended and often praying for them as I fell asleep at night.

Week after week they arrived, and week after week I found myself captivated by their devotion, their humility, the way they never drew attention to themselves, and the joy that emanated from them. There wasn’t even the slightest whiff of self-pity coming from either of them despite what was clearly a grave limitation. I finally got up the nerve to introduce myself and my husband. I said something about how beautiful their devotion was, and that it brought us great joy to see them each week. She, fairly beaming, introduced herself and her companion. He was her husband. From then on, as I fell asleep at night, I prayed for them by name.

I once observed them going to confession. I watched with a little chuckle as the wife opened the door to the confessional, a small, square room, took out the chair that rested in front of the kneeler, and tossed it outside the confessional to make room for her husband to be rolled in. She situated him before the screen, shut the door, and waited. Then, when he was finished, she rolled him out, and again, despite being a petite thing, she tossed the chair back in its place as though she’d been moving heavy furniture every day of her life, and then she went to Confession herself. They later attended Mass with the same reverence and devotion I’d observed so many times over the past year. They stayed to pray quietly for a while afterward and later left without the least fuss or commotion.

I don’t know the full story. Frankly, it’s none of my business. But I am profoundly grateful for their witness. There is a faithfulness that comes to life before my eyes each week when they arrive. Something so visible, so credible, so palpable, it’s impossible to deny and it’s impossible not to be confronted by it.

I doubt very much that my life has inspired such witness. I doubt anyone falls asleep praying for me for the ways I have made my faith, hope, and love so visible, so credible that it could not be denied. But this I can do: I can share the witness of this couple such that maybe you, my dear reader, will keep your eyes open and your heart awake the to homily that’s unfolding before you. And give thanks.

Liz Kelly is the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Place Called Golgotha. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org.

Pope St. John Paul tells us that as guardian to the mystery of the child Jesus, Joseph was tasked with protecting him from the world, until Jesus’s time had come. I stagger at the depth of humility that must have required. No limelight for Joseph, no book deals on how to raise a perfect son, no podcasts on how to run a holy family. Just fidelity, steadfastness, all while remaining anonymous in the world. We might wonder why, wouldn’t we be better off if we had more information about Joseph? John Paul reminds us that “The presence of Joseph in the New Testament is largely a silent one; and of course, Jesus in the blessed Sacrament is silent, too, and this silence is not without its import and its invitation.”

Indeed, the hidden life of Joseph teaches us something about the true meaning of adoration. If to adore means to reverence, to revere, to worship, one way that Joseph adored Jesus was by protecting these private years, by reverencing the fullness of the Lord. Isn’t the greatest demonstration of respect and reverence for another soul to honor all that it has been created for?

“Can you not stay awake with me one hour?” is often the verse chosen to advertise adoration in parishes. And this, of course, recalls the Lord’s words to his sleepy disciples who kept nodding off while he was in prayerful agony anticipating his passion.

Drawing on this moment it seems the emphasis is on keeping the Savior company, joining him in praying that he be strengthened for the extraordinary task ahead. But when his work was completed perfectly in his passion, death, resurrection and ascension, the shift in our holy hour has been to pray that we would be strengthened for the tasks we’re given, and so we are. It is Jesus who keeps us company, never falling asleep, never wavering in steadfast friendship when we need it the most, never weakening at the depth of our want and need of him.

[The Death of Saint Joseph, engraving, Alexander Bannerman (British, born Cambridge ca. 1730, active through 1792), public domain through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

I wonder if this steadfastness, this capacity to always be available to us, to always be there, was not first taught to Jesus by Joseph, Joseph who kept Jesus company in every moment of his private life, teaching him, forming him, feeding him. Was he also, in that mystical way that he fathered the son of God, preparing him to be present to us in the Blessed Sacrament?

We could argue that Joseph made a lifetime of holy hours, raising and feeding and forming Jesus. John Paul writes, “In the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Church venerates the memory . . . of St. Joseph, because ‘he fed him whom the faithful must eat as the bread of eternal life.’” What a powerful link exists then between St. Joseph who fed Jesus, the Bread of Life, who feeds the world.

Holy St. Joseph, teach us how to truly adore, how to truly revere, protect and proclaim, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Liz Kelly is the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Place Called Golgotha. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org.

Back in stock at LizK.org! Patron Saint of Air Travelers and Pilots, Luggage Tag with slot for ID. They sell out quickly.

One woman was from India and had been traveling for more than 24 hours already with a baby just learning his first steps. She was clearly completely exhausted and it wasn’t long before she and her child were fast asleep. But at some point, the boy awoke and started to make for the aisle. I caught him and ended up holding him while he played with my rosary beads for at least another hour while his mother slept. When she woke up with a start looking for her son and saw him tucked in my lap playing contentedly the relief and gratitude on her face was palpable.

On another flight from Alaska to the lower 48, I was given a seat next to a very young boy traveling alone—leaving one parent to join another in another state. The flight attendant let me know this and she tended to the boy, allowing him to make a last phone call to his father with her cell phone before takeoff. It wasn’t long before we were in the air and they were selling earphones for the in-flight movie. I bought some for the boy and myself, got us plugged in and situated, and we watched a kid’s movie together. Before too long, he was asleep on me and the flight attendant, who kept careful watch, would occasionally come by to see if anything was needed. When he awoke, we played with his cars and coloring book and the 5 hour flight passed without incident. When we landed, the attendant came to escort him off the plane, and I noticed at baggage claim that he was with a woman, probably his mother, and he pointed to me as his mother leaned in to catch what he was saying. I waved and he waved back. His mother mouthed “thank you” in my direction.

Sometimes, I think we imagine that our acts of charity only count if they are bothersome and difficult. It only counts if it hurts. Maybe I have more patience for the crying child than someone else, but if I do, it is only because in that moment, I am best yoked to Christ. My burden is light only because he is carrying the lion’s share.

A Passenger from Hell

On a train trip years ago, I was seated next to an active meth addict who was beyond obnoxious. He rather assaulted me with questions, clearly unable to control himself with any kind of comportment, and when he found out I was Catholic, I thought for a moment his head might spin around on his neck. His behavior became increasingly egregious and loud and I could see other passengers moving to other train cars or turning their backs while they turned up the volume on their headphones, disgusted by the insults he was hurling at the world in every direction. I get that, I wanted to move too.

I stayed. I showed him a piece I was writing on Mother Teresa. As he read it, I thought he might hurl my laptop out of the train. He told me the piece was making him literally sick. At that point, he grew weary of trying to bait me, handed my laptop to me, and shuffled off to another part of the train cussing at the world around him all the way, turmoil and unrest pouring out of him like a putrid cloud. A number of passengers close by sent me looks of relief. Suddenly, the air was more clear. Truly, it was as if something very troubled, even evil had left our presence.

I’ve always remembered that boy. He couldn’t have been more than 19. He seemed pitifully lost, maybe even possessed. I’ll never know. And I have no idea that our encounter achieved anything good at all—but that I met him, looked him in the eye, tried to speak to him like a human, and that I pray for him, even now. Maybe that’s not such a small thing.

We don’t all have the same gifts and that’s all right. But that’s not a free pass to turn our backs on those in need. Rather it’s an invitation to think about the ways Christ has made our burden light, the ways that we can serve others in joy and in difficulty that others cannot. Your duty is not to succeed, but to be faithful to use the gifts God has given you. Success lies in his hands.

Lord, let me always remember that my yoke is first yours, and let me get to work.

Liz Kelly Stanchina is the community leader for Women’s Formation at the Word on Fire Institute. She is an internationally-recognized speaker and retreat leader and the award-winning author or co-author of more than a dozen books including Anchored by Hope: Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul, A Thrill of Hope, the Blessed is She Advent Devotional for 2024, A Place Called Golgotha: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ, Love Like a Saint: Cultivating Virtue with Holy Women, and Jesus Approaches, What Contemporary Women Can Learn about Healing, Freedom & Joy from the Women of the New Testament. She is a two-time cancer survivor and has lived with multiple sclerosis for two decades. She gives all glory to God that she can still work and flourishes in her faith and ministry. Visit her website at LizK.org.

I keep a small wad of bills on me because of Jeremiah. I want to be prepared.

[Sri Harsha Gera (iamharsha_) @Pixabay, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons]

As the weeks and months went on, we would greet each other and make our little exchange and I found myself saying ridiculous, meaningless things like “Take care of yourself.” One day I said, “I’ll say a prayer for you” and even though I meant it, even though I do pray for Jeremiah, I hated how condescending that sounded, how holy-roller and hypocritical as I drove away in my car that is paid for, on my way to a job with a salary and benefits, into a world a million miles from Jeremiah’s. I wanted to do better.

One day, I asked, “How are you doing?” He shook his head a bit and gestured toward what looked like an old, dirty sleeping bag among his few possessions leaning up against a utility pole. “You wanna know?” he said sharply, “That’s how I am. That’s my reality.” He turned his back, the light turned green, and I pulled away opening up the painful gap between us. I was dissatisfied and disheartened, and utterly dumbfounded by the stupid ease of my escape.

Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven

I prayed for wisdom. Fr. John Wickham suggests that wisdom is the graced ability to hold the risen Christ in your heart moment by moment, to measure everything against the horizon of the truth of eternity. He says wisdom is found in recollecting oneself continually with the Word, allowing Jesus to reveal himself to you in his teaching, and in particular, with the reality of his resurrection.

How could Jeremiah and I ever share a world with a resurrected Jesus?

One day I found that my cache of bills had been spent. I started digging in the cup holder for a few quarters, any change. Jeremiah accepted the coins gratefully as I apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, that’s all I have today,” but then I added, “I’ll see you again.” I pointed at him and nodded my reassurance, my little pledge. He nodded back and smiled. “All right!” he said taking me at my word.

I drove away hoping I would see Jeremiah again. I wondered if he felt the same way about seeing me. “I will see you again.” Such a little gesture and yet, he seemed to receive it with all the weight I had intended. Suddenly, we had a plan, a hope, the promise of a future together.

It is, of course, woefully inadequate. Not nearly enough. But it’s a start. I wonder if just maybe that little hope is where Jeremiah and I can begin to share a home, a sliver of the promise of the kingdom of heaven. Maybe that’s where we can meet in blessedness and catch a glimpse of Jesus walking by.

Lord, show me how to create “home,” even for a moment, for those who have none.

Liz Kelly Stanchina is the community leader for Women’s Formation at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Institute. She is an internationally-recognized speaker and retreat leader and the award-winning author or co-author of more than a dozen books including Anchored by Hope: Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul, A Thrill of Hope, the Blessed is She Advent Devotional for 2024, A Place Called Golgotha: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ, Love Like a Saint: Cultivating Virtue with Holy Women, and Jesus Approaches, What Contemporary Women Can Learn about Healing, Freedom & Joy from the Women of the New Testament. Kelly’s written works frequently appear in the Magnificat’s Lenten and Advent Companions, as well as Blessed is She, Shalom Tidings, and other Christian forums. Kelly holds advanced degrees in Creating Writing from the University of Alaska, and Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. She received her certification as a spiritual director in 2015 from the Cenacle of Divine Providence, Clearwater, Florida, in association with Franciscan University in Steubenville. From 2008 to 2022, she served as the managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture at the Center for Catholic Studies in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she also taught in the Catholic Studies program at the University of St. Thomas. Kelly has appeared on Relevant Radio, Catholic Answers, The Christophers, Radio Maria, Radio Maria Australia, Public Radio, Boston Catholic Television, EWTN, and Salt and Light Television, Canada. She is a two-time cancer survivor and has lived with multiple sclerosis for two decades. She gives all glory to God that she can still work and flourish in her faith and ministry. Visit her website at LizK.org.

As you can imagine, the cuddler job is the most coveted volunteer position at the hospital and the wait to be trained and get approval to serve in this role sometimes takes years. But this gentleman is patient. He attends all the necessary meetings, trainings, and vettings, and one day his position in line to active cuddler status jumps up quickly when he volunteers for the less desirable 2 AM to 4 AM shift. This is where he meets James.

James makes it known that he is in need of holding and so, this gentleman volunteer scoops him up and settles into a rocking chair with the newborn bundle.

Their time together begins something like this:

“James,” says the cuddler, “I’m going to tell you all about a wonderful man named Jesus.”

James replies, “Who, Jesus? Oh, I know him. I met him at my conception.”

The cuddler reports that this conversation was made possible because “James spoke to my soul.”

And I don’t doubt it for a second.

And I wonder if there weren’t angels all around to witness this quiet, hidden exchange, like Gabriel at the Annunciation delivering his glad tidings. The most momentous of things breaking out over all creation in unimaginable power and the most reverently concealed intimacy.

And I wonder how many moments like this are taking place all over the world every day at this strange and difficult time in the world’s history. Between the sick and their caregivers and families, between those separated by distance but not by heart, between so many souls and the Blessed Sacrament we long to meet, filling the world with tiny explosions of grace, what Catherine Doherty would call, “cosmic tenderness.”

This notion of spiritual communion: I don’t prefer it to actual communion, of course, and I find myself rankled by the extension of lockdowns and quarantines. “Enough already.” So goes the interior tantrum.

But then I remember this story of James and his cuddler, and I do not doubt its veracity. I do not doubt it was real and complete and accomplished all that it was meant to accomplish in drawing two souls together—into the heart of Truth.

So too with my Jesus. He will speak to my soul, even in silence, even through sanctioned separation, when I’m in need of being picked up and held a long while and told of the wonders of heaven. It is the pure tenderness of God we meet in spiritual communion, an unspeakable mercy.

Oh Jesus, may my soul be attentive to that.

Father, breach the chasm, find me and awaken my soul to your presence and grace, quiet and hidden, holding up the universe, accomplishing every good thing.

Liz Kelly is the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Place Called Golgotha. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org.

As an example, when she and her husband decided to adopt a child, they opted for the most difficult arrangement currently available in our state: from foster care to adoption. It is a process fraught with uncertainty and agonizing tedium. The bureaucracy alone would put off most people of a lesser constitution. In all likelihood she and her husband will be caring for a child (or children, as they hope to foster siblings) who has suffered a great deal of emotional trauma and might have any number of spiritual, physical, and psychological needs beyond the ordinary, wounds that may take a long time, perhaps a lifetime, to mend. The process might take years, or worse, even after years of physical, financial, and emotional investment might not come to fruition at all.

All parenting involves a great deal of sacrifice and selflessness, a kind of patience and tenacity of spirit to suffer the pains of forming a unique, unrepeatable, little human, body and soul. But somehow the willingness to take on this method to becoming a parent ratchets up that sacrifice to new and inspiring levels in my mind.

But that’s just who Veronica is. She’s fearless when it comes to the hard realities. She worked in a poor part of the world where life was rather precarious for a woman on her own and she suffered the daily toils that come with such an existence—even the little things, like having to wash her hair in a sink of cold water—in order to help girls get an education. She spent years working on the front lines of the pro-life movement, tirelessly knocking on the doors of legislators trying to educate them about any number of complex issues. In a particular apostolate of which she is a member, she deliberately chooses the assignments that others will not take—the harder ones, the ones no one else even thinks to take up.

Veronica’s is a compelling and credible Catholicism because it is uninterested in tidy consolations or platitudes. If someone wanted to give her a “humanitarian award,” she’d laugh and think it an absurdity. Her life quietly, mostly anonymously, burns with the authentic desire to care for those who cannot care for themselves—but it is a holy fire, not one stoked by a desire for rewards or recognition, or even a sense of self-worth.

Her faith walks her into the tender, dark underbelly of the beastly human condition without fear and asks in all earnestness and without the slightest condescension or pretension, “How can I help?” She burns on out of an uncommon and holy valor that I know has been fed and formed in the Church.

“If it is you, command me to come to you”

Peter’s faith was big and beautiful and imperfect. When Jesus invited him out onto the sea, he lasted a while—dear fellow, our rock—at least a few steps before the dark world and fear overtook him, and look what the Lord did with him.

In my mind, I see Christ calling Veronica out onto the sea. But she doesn’t sink at the sight of the storm and the crashing waves. No, she dances.

Jesus, may we be bold, fearless, and without self-interest or false piety to take your compassion to every dark and difficult corner of the human heart. Amen.

Peter walks on water towards Christ. Etching. From the Wellcome Collection.

Prompt for prayer and meditation

Read over the following passage from Matthew 14: 23–31 several times slowly:

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

• Now, in your imagination, place yourself in the boat, in the aftermath of a night’s storm. Place yourself in close company with Jesus.

• Hear the Lord asking Peter to reach beyond his fear. Then imagine him turning to you, to address you. In what ways is God calling you to heroic holiness? Is it to stretch beyond fear? Is it to love without conditions? Or something else?

• What stands in your way of this call? As you reach for Jesus’ outstretched hand, can you also give him the obstacle to your holiness?

• Then, pay attention. What rises in your heart and mind? What do you say to Jesus? What does he say to you?

  I’ll be praying with you and for you.

As he looked up to see me leaving the chapel, he smiled and said, “Daily Mass, huh?”

“Yes,” I said smiling back, thinking he might be moved by the fact that we celebrate Mass daily. He wasn’t.

“Your little daily cannibalism, huh?” he said smirking.

It was such an offensive thought, and though this argument was nothing new to the Church, it was an insult I had never heard before. I was struck dumb. He started to pass me when I tossed out, “I am not a cannibal.”

“You Catholics,” he retorted smugly, “You eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood, that’s cannibalism.”

I stammered and said, “That’s not what we do!” mortified by his claim. But he shrugged past me, snorting, “You don’t even know your own religion.” He was gone before I could come up with a meaningful retort.

I’d had very little philosophy at that stage. I couldn’t have told you the difference between accidents and substance. I wouldn’t have been able to explain transubstantiation well, that only the accidents of bread and wine remain even though the substance of the Eucharist is changed into Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity. I didn’t have ready the argument that cannibals eat dead human flesh; they consume body parts and as they do, that flesh disappears. I wouldn’t have been able to argue that we don’t eat the dead body parts of Christ; Christ isn’t dead at all, he is risen! He remains completely unchanged no matter how often we partake of the Eucharist that contains the fullness of his Person. In the Blessed Sacrament, we become one with Christ and this union leads to more life, eternal life, not lunch.

In these years when we are working toward a Eucharistic revival, it’s really important to remember our catechesis on the Blessed Sacrament, but more than anything, it’s important to remember who the Blessed Sacrament is and what he accomplishes in us. We are not annihilated when we receive Christ’s body and blood; we are transformed, we become more Christ-like. We are not destroyed; we are elevated, made more holy. Furthermore, the Blessed Sacrament is not a what, it’s a whom, a him. A person. And this person has so much to teach us about loving well, about answering the question, What does it mean to be created for communion? What does it mean to lead a Eucharistic life? Jesus is the living answer to this question; he walked around Galilee and into Jerusalem answering this question. He is the living Eucharist. As Fr. Stinissen notes, “When Jesus Says, ‘Do this [in remembrance of me] he also means: Enter into the ecstatic love that I show you here, love in the same way that I love.” 25, Bread that is Broken, Wilfrid Stinissen, OCD

So how do we do that, live a eucharistic life? Love the way he does, eucharistically? Making of ourselves a sacrifice that is not diminished but made more? How do we make this move, from understanding the Eucharist not as a what but as a whom, a him? How do we move our hearts from consuming a thing to engaging in a relationship with a person? That was the move that Brian could not, would not make. Sadly, I didn’t help him.

The claim of cannibalism and other arguments that try to debunk the Real Presence deserve educated, thoughtful replies. The Church has an overabundance of brilliant and holy minds who have been supplying us with everything we need for more than two millennia to engage our culture in this conversation. Let’s lean on them.

And let’s remember too, arguments are important, but they can only go so far. Experiencing the presence of Jesus in the Sacrament is more powerful and effective than any argument. Let’s allow the Lord to do the heavy lifting of conversion. If I had the chance to go back to that conversion with “Brian, the bully,” I would have invited him to take a closer look at what the Church teaches, but I would have also invited him to a holy hour or to Mass with me. If I could go back.

Is there someone in your world who would benefit from a similar invitation? Either to conversation or to accompany you to your next holy hour?

Lord, your Word is spirit and life. Help us to bring others into your Presence, that they may encounter for themselves your forgiveness and grace, your love and life. Amen.

Liz Kelly is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org

Healing is a complex maneuver, full of surprises, delays, and more pain than we’d like. And often enough, deep healing doesn’t look the way we think it will.

When I was young, I thought healing in Christ meant a scar-free existence, a kind of blissful annihilation of all wounds—those I’d received and those I’d created in others. Afterall, there is no way to partially raise Lazarus from the dead. Jesus touched lepers and they were cured completely—no scar or indication of any kind was left behind that they had once suffered such an illness. Scripture specifically notes that the lame walked, and in some cases danced, after Jesus had healed them. There is no mention of them limping away with a cane.

But for most of us, healing does not come all at once but in bits and pieces, in waves, and occasional storms. This side of heaven, some of our wounds may not be completed healed. What are we to make of it when Jesus does not close up our wounds or remove every evidence of their ever having existed?

I will not speculate about what the glorified body of Christ is, but we can safely say that if Jesus’s wounds from the Crucifixion were still apparent even after Resurrection, as we know they were, for the doubting Thomas needed to place his hand in Christ’s side, if the wounds of Jesus were still visible and even open, even on route to ascension, then ours might remain so too. We needn’t fear the scars that the wounds we suffer on this earth leave behind. No doubt the fullness of healing in heaven far exceeds and completes what we experience on earth, but wouldn’t it be just like Jesus to use our wounds in the same way he used his own, so that doubt is put to rest and new fervor and faith can take its place? We must be credible witnesses—not just to Jesus—but to the Resurrected Christ. To witness as he witnessed, open wounds and all.

Catherine Doherty writes that today’s youth will seek out Christians specifically “in search of the wounds of Christ which alone can heal them. Our modern generation must touch before it will believe. We must have those wounds to show them, so that they can touch them and be touched and healed by Christ.”

Jesus wasn’t damaged goods on Good Friday nor the morning of Easter, he was on his way to full glorification. Maybe, in that mystical way in which we all participate in the Body of Christ, my young friend is too, and maybe one day soon, someone will need the witness of her woundedness that hopes in future glorification. Her wounds will point us in the direction of, not the hatred that put Christ on the Cross, but the power, glory, and immanent love that brought him forth from the tomb complete with holes in in hands, feet, and side.

Lord, there is an unexpected, delicate work of mercy in the wounds we suffer. Help me to offer those wounds I still carry in such a way that the doubting and indifferent may be moved to faith and greater healing.

Liz Kelly is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org or follow her on Instagram at LizKToday.

This phrase has been coming back to me in recent years. Entering what is certainly the last half of my life, there is a growing sense that I want to leave it all on the course; that is, do all that God might ask of me, let these last years be my best years in service of the Lord. St. Teresa launched her Missionaries of Charity at 40; she’d already lived a full, productive life when she said “yes” to the most demanding work yet. I think to myself, “There’s still time, God willing, to do some mighty work for the Kingdom.” I don’t wish to advocate spiritual burnout or throwing away energy foolishly—but I do want to spend myself well and without reserve for whatever work God asks of me.

Let’s finish strong

At about this point every year in Lent, I’ve grown a little weary, maybe a little lax on my Lenten resolutions. The world is drab and cold and without color and my Lent might be too. But there’s still time to re-embrace my earlier fervor. No matter what kind of Lent I’ve had to this point, there’s still a chance to finish well.

I once had a wonderful neighbor who recently died at 100 years old. Her children, ten of them, faithfully took turns living with her so that she might remain in her own home until she was 98. I would occasionally chat with one of her older sons who frequently stayed with her for days at a time in his retirement. While I watered my flower beds, he would have a smoke and sometimes lament his youth. By his account, he was a wild kid and a bit of a worry to his parents. He clearly regretted that. One day I simply said, “But you’re here now, caring for her, and that’s what matters.” He looked up from his cigarette, smiled at me and said, “You’re all right, kid.”

Even St. Teresa of Avila had her “prayer to redeem lost time.” I pray it often: Source of all mercy! . . . While recalling the wasted years that are past, I believe that You, Lord, can in an instant turn this loss to gain. . . I firmly believe that You can do all things. Please restore to me the time lost, giving me Your grace, both now and in the future . . . Amen.

When I am tempted to imagine that my past—or even my Lent—is irredeemable, I think about my neighbor’s son and about my brother’s encouragement. Whatever kind of Lent—or life—you’ve had to this point, our God is still the source of all mercy and perfect restoration. There’s still time to leave it all on the course, to finish strong. I’ll join you.

Let’s recommit to our Lenten disciplines and ring in the glory of Easter with fresh fervor.

Who’s in?

Liz Kelly is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Anchored by Hope: Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul, Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org or follow her on Instagram at LizKToday.

After their presentation, they turned to her in triumph as if to say, “See, we have improved you!” She said simply, “Follow me,” and took them out into the street, stopped at the first beggar she saw—he was dying, covered in sores, probably starving—and asked his name. She turned to the MBAs and said, “Feed Joseph and then give him a bath.”

Her point could not have been clearer.

What is crucial to any person wishing to be an instrument of God’s mercy is that the human person must be at the center of it. And that person has a name. Tobit says it this way: “Do not turn your face away from any of the poor, and God’s face will not be turned away from you” (4: 7b). What I give, how much I give—these are not nearly so important as the heart from which I give, the way I give, and the knowledge that I’m not giving to “a cause” or “a problem,” but to a person, a unique, unrepeatable expression of the thought of God.

(St. Martin and the Beggar, Italian, Roman-Bolognese, anonymous, 17th century, public domain.)

And I think this might be why Pope Francis, God rest his soul, was so determined not to let us forget it.

Just before Ash Wednesday several years ago he caused a little stir—a favorite pastime, it seems—when he suggested that we should give money to beggars on the street, even if they use that money for alcohol. The Pope suggested that if “a glass of wine is the only happiness [a homeless person] has in life, that’s OK. Instead, ask yourself what do you do on the sly? What ‘happiness’ do you seek in secret?”

I confess I found that a little challenging. Every day on my way into work, there are beggars on the off ramp of my exit. They stand there awkwardly, hunched over in the cold with the predictable cardboard signs: “homeless, anything helps,” “God bless you,” “veteran, out of work with 3 kids.” Not to take issue with His Holiness but when I meet beggars outside in a frigid Minnesota winter, I often think of the years I spent living in Alaska. Alcohol addiction is rampant there and, sadly, it was not an uncommon thing for a homeless person to be found, frozen to death, perhaps even yards from the front door of a homeless shelter where they had been turned away because they were intoxicated.

So what do we do?

Of course Pope Francis was not asking us to be negligent—just as Mother Teresa was not suggesting that proper business management isn’t helpful. But maybe giving alms isn’t so much about solving world hunger, but more about solving “Richard’s” hunger or “Mary’s”—at least for a few hours. Maybe giving alms is an opportunity to relax my grip on judgement, greed, and fear, and release a little more humanity in the world—in the form of a couple of bucks and a “Hello, what’s your name?”

Liz Kelly is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org or follow her on Instagram at LizKToday.

After nearly ten years of solid sobriety from drugs and alcohol, she relapsed in a dramatic fashion, during which time and in some part due to her drug-induced negligence, her young teenaged daughter was kidnapped and trafficked. In an extraordinary turn of events, some months later, the authorities got her back and brought her home. She now lives in an institution where she fights for her life and her sanity, the horrors of her experience so torturous, it’s unclear whether she will ever be able to live outside of an institution again.

Her mother has been freed of her addictions once again and is battling like a mighty lioness, doing everything she can for this daughter that was miraculously returned to her. Still, the grief, the regret, she wears it like a heavy coat three sizes too big. There are no easy amends here. She says to me: “How can I ever forgive myself?”

In that moment, I think, there it is, that still small voice that says, I thirst.

Another woman on another retreat tells me that her husband died not too long ago of a merciless, progressive degenerative illness. Caring for him, watching him suffer this way over years of time, she says, nearly killed her. And now, it turns out the disease is genetic and has been passed on to her eldest son. He, now, is dying by this same merciless method, and he is angry, bitter, thrashing at the world around him, including his mother, for this cruel fate. As she sits with me, I see she is a slight thing, maybe a hundred pounds, perhaps less, like a little sack of frail bones. And so weary. She says, “I don’t know if I can do this again,” and I believe her.

Once more, there it is, so faint you’ll miss it if you do not pay attention: I thirst.

(The Crucifixion by Stefano de Verano, ca. 1400, public domain.)

Another soul, I learn on another retreat, has recently lost her very young grandchildren and daughter-in-law to murder-suicide. No one saw it coming. There was no history of mental illness. No one even knew there was a gun in the house. How can God be God? she is wondering earnestly. No bitterness has yet made its way into her heart, only the agony of the impossibility that this tragedy will ever make sense. I listen to her, hard and long as she explains she will never be whole again. From this, she will never recover, she says staring off into the distance, “not on this side of heaven.”

I strain my ears to hear it, so low, so faint, but here too, Jesus whispers, I thirst.

To hear Jesus say from the cross “I thirst” may not help to end your suffering, but it crushes into dust the lie that you are isolated from the Lord in it. In the most profound way possible, it proves Jesus is right there, with you, in your suffering, thirsting with you. And he’s not going anywhere.

In this Lenten season, may we bring our thirst to the foot of the cross, as great and as overwhelming as it may be, and find the courage to look upon our crucified Lord, and to remember his promise: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Lord, show us how to draw the most thirsty among us to your eternal, healing well. Amen.

Liz Kelly Stanchina is an internationally recognized retreat leader and author of more than a dozen books. A portion of this column was excerpted from A Place Called Golgotha: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ (WAUP 2023). Her new book, Anchored by Hope: Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul (WAUP 2026) is available March 16. Visit her website at LizK.org.

After coming home from several months in the Sudan, my friend Sarah could barely go out to a restaurant. “Americans are obsessed with food,” she would say and then order the simplest item on the menu, usually soup.

One evening, not long after he had returned from India, my friend Ray and I were sitting in his kitchen when his son, then a college student, sauntered in, opened the refrigerator and standing in the bright light of its interior bulb began to scan its considerable contents. Then he turned to his dad and simply asked, “What do you want for dinner?”

Ray burst out laughing. And then organized a fundraiser for the local food shelf.

It’s true that this is a question only those living in abundance may ask. It would be absurd in most of the rest of the world. Most of the rest of the world lives, day after day, on a plate of rice or beans, maybe an occasional slab of meat now and then. Most of the rest of the world routinely lives with some hunger and certainly a very narrow list of choices when it comes to food. There is no “food pyramid” on the streets of Kolkata.

There are of course the hungry on our streets too, here in the US, though they might be fewer in number and a bit better hidden in this country than others. In a season of regular fasting we are provided with the opportunity to remember them and to reframe our relationship to food.

If you cannot fast from food, certainly, you may fast from something else. But most of us can fast from food. And we probably should—because the Lord did, and rigorously so, to prepare for all the Father was about to ask of him.

There’s still some flexibility in how we accomplish that, particularly as a family.

A Quaker friend of mine told me that once a year, his family would try to clear out the shelves of their kitchen and pantry, eating whatever was there until the shelves were near bare. Of course he and his wife did not jeopardize the health of their children—no one was seriously denied nutrition—but it became a creative and instructive family project to see how many different ways you could prepare a dented can of tomato soup and a forgotten bag of rice. He reports that his children began to look forward to “eating down the house.” Routine trips to the grocery store at the end of their little family project were met with positive glee and a renewed sense of thanksgiving. The prayers of their children on behalf of the hungry at mealtime took on a whole new level of earnest intercession.

We fast—in multiple ways—as a penance for our sins, to grow in detachment to material comforts, and to create more interior space for prayer. We fast from meat on Fridays because we will not render flesh in honor of the Lord’s Passion. We fast to purify and prepare ourselves for the work that the Father is asking of us.

Fasting is good for us. Let’s not be too quick to find reasons to bypass it.

May your stomach growl—and your heart expand.

Liz Kelly is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org or follow her on Instagram at LizKToday.

It is an obvious principle that simple preparation helps to assure the fruitfulness of the prayer—or any worthy activity. Romano Guardini writes that “No one with a serious task before him will approach it unprepared, but will concentrate on the demands he has to face.” He likens it to showing up at a music concert at the last minute, “allowing for no transition between the noise and the unrest of the street and the opening bars of the concert.” Instead if we really want to receive it, “We shall be there in good time and hold ourselves ready for the beautiful experience before us.”

We can apply the same principle to our Lenten practices. How can we prepare ourselves better, assuring the fruitfulness of this holy season? How do we transition from ordinary time and “hold ourselves ready for the beautiful experience” of Lent?

Perhaps you might build some transition into your schedule. One simple tool is to reread the Passion narratives, maybe as a family, quietly, slowly, without much commentary or to do, simply allowing the Passion to root and then wait for the Holy Spirit to “spirit.”

As a child, I can remember my parents and grade school teachers helping us to prepare for the liturgical season. They’d ask us to think about what we might give up—television or sweets or a favorite game. We would fill our “rice bowls” with our pennies and take a certain pride and childish possessiveness in being able to give something up. Lent was like a spiritual exercise I performed well or poorly. It’s embarrassing to admit how long that childish mentality stayed with me.

Lent is a gift, as sure as any other liturgical season, as sure as any other grace from God. And it does not belong to me. Lent is the Lord’s to do as he wishes. We do not solely take up Lenten practices in order to achieve a certain effect; we enter this holy season with fervor and determination to fast, pray, repent, and give of ourselves because we love the Lord, and because he has asked us to. We want to receive well and in holiness every good gift he might like to bestow and in whatever way he might like to bestow it. Lent belongs to the Lord. Any outcome must be left up to him.

Take a little time this week to prepare. As you read through the Passion narratives or make an extra holy hour, ask the Lord what he desires of you in it, in your prayer, your fasting, your almsgiving. Then on Ash Wednesday, place your Lent on the altar. And trust that the Holy Spirit is already at work revitalizing in you all that is most precious to heaven.

Let’s be there “in good time” and “hold ourselves ready” for the beautiful experience of Lent.

Liz Kelly is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org

Miss K was the science teacher for most of my older siblings and over the years became a close friend to my mother. In that time, my mother came to understand that Miss’s childhood was marked by a terrible cruelty, and in the aftermath of this abuse, she was prone to depression and sometimes it would grip her without mercy. During these bouts, she would call my mom, who would listen to her for an hour or two. Occasionally, Miss K would come to stay with us. And though she was always tired, she never seemed able to sleep, and I would wake in the middle of the night to hear her poking around in our kitchen.

Toward the end of her life, Miss K had found peace, good friends, a community that loved her in all of her quirkiness. There was a certain lifting in her spirit that was palpable. She remained close to my mother, recounting that those long, difficult phone calls with my mom probably saved her life; that my mother, by simply listening, had helped her more than she could say.

Several years ago, Miss K was scheduled to stay with my mom and dad for a few days over the New Year, but when my parents fell ill with colds, she postponed her trip and came a few weeks later instead. She was greeted warmly by my older brother, who just happened to be at my parents’. A former student, my brother would become an electrical engineer years after he spent time in Miss K’s classroom, and I wonder if her way of teaching science might not have made a good impression on him as a boy. He helped her to carry in her many bags—Miss K never traveled light—and after settling into my parents living room, she remarked, “I just love staying here.”

Not long after, she sat down to say a rosary with mom and dad and then have dinner. And some time in the next hour, Miss K had a massive stroke. She lost consciousness as my parents held her and helped her to the floor where they covered her with a blanket and called 911. The paramedics asked my mother to go through her things, looking for any medicines she might be taking, and in every pocket and crook and cranny, my mom found prayer cards, novenas, and all of that Catholic DNA that marks a faith-filled life. Miss K died peacefully a few days later at a local hospital surrounded by those who loved her the most.

Sometimes, healing creeps along at a slow, steady pace. Sometimes, mercy is quiet and hidden and more effective for never drawing attention to itself. Sometimes, the simplest kindness, which seems to cost us almost nothing at all, is the very balm that does the most good. And sometimes, I think, the Father saves his greatest mercies for last in this life.

Father in heaven, thank you for the gift of Miss K and that she chose to pass on, not the cruelty she knew, but a love for your creation instead. And thank you for allowing her end to stand in such stark contrast to her beginning. Your mercy endures forever.

Rest in peace, Miss K.

Liz Kelly is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, A Thrill of Hope, and Anchored by Hope, Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul (forthcoming March 2026). Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org or follow her on Instagram at LizKToday.

I’ll never forget a comment made by his wife while they were still living in India. “We try to give everything away and follow Christ,” she said, “but that’s really hard. I’ll never be as poor as the truly poor.” She went on to list an American passport, an education, and healthcare among some of her possessions that would always set her apart from those she served.

Transitioning back to one of the wealthiest countries in the world, this beautiful young family has worked to maintain a spirit of poverty. Smiling, my colleague remarked, “It’s incredible how much you don’t need.”

A few months later I was boxing up old clothes to be given away and my heart sank as the words of this faithful young couple kept ringing in my ears: amazing how much you don’t need, you’ll never be as poor as the truly poor. My husband and I live a very simple life. We have modest salaries, a modest house, and are generally inclined to save rather than to spend. And there’s nothing wrong with wealth, of course. Some of God’s favorites were wildly wealthy and generous to boot.

But boxing up that clothing, some items that still had price tags on them, my heart felt rancid with the stupidity and waste that is self-preoccupation and the ridiculous poison that is avarice.

I decided I would commit myself to greater austerity, refraining from the purchase of any clothes for at least one year. One year, no clothing purchases. I’d wear what I had. Simple.

Still, that was the easy part. The more difficult part was taking the monies I would have spent on clothing and giving it away.

My best friend from Alaska, the one who taught me to love God’s word, demonstrated this principle faithfully. We would—when occasion called for it—fast together over various petitions. I still remember her meeting me for “lunch” on our fasting days. We would spend the time reading God’s word and praying together.

That’s the other half of any mortification: donation. We don’t just fast for fasting’s sake, but rather fill that time we might have spent eating with more prayer, nourishing ourselves with God’s word. Fasting of any variety creates more space for loving and serving the Lord.

And so it must be with our more austere year. We don’t just put down clothes shopping without putting something holier in its place. And we don’t get to keep the money we might have spent on clothing or the whole enterprise is for naught.

I have taken up this practice for several years, on and off over the last decade. Some years I’m more successful than others, but I am always surprised at the relief it brings on the one hand to simplify, to refuse to acquire—and on the other, a weighty, uncomfortable, and ever-present knowledge of the poor.

Just this morning, my brother landed in Kolkata to serve the poor for several weeks. The poor are always with us.

But how will I be with them?

Here’s the challenge: One year, no new clothes, wear what you have. Then, at the end of the year, make a tally and donate the monies you might have spent on clothes to your favorite charity.

Who’s in?

Jesus, your word is clear and challenging: to be perfect, we must sell our possessions and give the money to the poor (Mt 19:21). Forgive me the many times I have ignored the poor. Give me better eyes to see their need and to know how to use my resources in such a way that will please your generous heart and keep me focused on the treasures of heaven.

Liz Kelly is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and A Thrill of Hope. Her take home retreat for Jesus Approaches has been called “a spa for the soul.” She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She speaks and leads retreats around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org. Her next book, Anchored by Hope, Meditations to Calm the Anxious Soul will be released March 2026.