On my first three visits to Italy, I went as a tourist, seeing all the famous attractions and experiencing the grandeur of the country. This past June, I traveled back to Umbria, the beautiful land of my grandparents, as a pilgrim, and saw everything in a...
On a Friday in January the school day ended with a unique twist. Several seniors who weren’t all that close and many underclassmen we knew even less piled into a van and various other vehicles. We departed for a long trip up to the Poconos for the GS vaca...
This past June we had our GS Summer Vacation. For this vacation we had a friend of ours with us named Kasper who is bound to a wheelchair. There were many obstacles to figure out through the entire vacation so that he could enjoy the vacation and feel com...
It’s been an interesting year in Pittsburgh, PA. Our school of community started meeting again in person thanks to the multiple generous entities at a parish who were willing to host our meeting. These include a capuchin friary attached to the parish...
“American watercolors, 1880-1990, Into the Light”, the title of an exhibit at the Harvard Art Museum, caught my eye earlier this summer because I knew my friend Laura loved watercolors. I asked her and a few other friends if they wanted to go together to ...
This year, upon my arrival in La Thuile, I checked in and went directly to my room to drop off my bag. My roommate was already there. “Hi I’m Lorenzo and I live in Denver, Colorado.” “Nice to meet you. I’m Simone and I live in Moscow, Russia.” Moscow? Ho...
It was nostalgia that tricked me into reading all of Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy. The book begins with a midnight expedition to a vantage point where the widowed Vanauken can contemplate a certain country house shining in the moonlight. The house co...
Noise filled my mind though we walked in silence. I couldn’t stay focused. The harder I tried, the more distracted I became. I carried with me a list of intentions a mile long but I couldn’t quiet my heart enough to even think of one. I couldn’t wait for ...
“Thinking back to Mother Elvira, I have always seen her as a person who has been able to believe in me since the beginning of my community journey. I have always felt loved when no one believed in me anymore, I was sad and lifeless. Through the community ...
I decided to go on the Pilgrimage after the CL university student vacation in Colorado because I was deeply touched by the people I met there and the friendships I formed. We arrived in Mishicot on August 11th, and it was exciting to reunite with friends...
During a long weekend in July, the upper Midwest held our annual “family vacation” in Western Wisconsin, which drew people from across the region, and from outside it as well. On the surface, it looked like any other vacation we’ve taken there in years pa...
In the summer of 1965, Fr. Giussani traveled to the United States to study the methods that American parishes used to teach catechism. Even in a moment of overexertion and facing recurring liver and gallbladder issues at the time, Giussani made the trip ...
A few months back I stumbled on Mark Twain’s book, Joan of Arc. I decided to read it since I couldn’t find the book I was looking for in the first place. An unusual thing happened to me at the very end — I wept. Even before I was very deep into it I had a...
A book presentation, let’s say it, can be a boring thing. Words are words, whether they are spoken or written, and they convey what they can – even the Word itself became flesh, became an event to touch people’s hearts and change their existence to the po...
On June 29, 2023, the United States Supreme Court released its decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. In an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court ruled that the admissions programs at H...
The most shocking thing to me about the Mountains and Plains family vacation this year was that although many things were different than last year, I walked away with the same new desire for my life: I don’t want to be old, boring, and uninterested. I wan...
Last month, I attended my first Communion and Liberation Vacation with the Lower Midwest Region. I had previously experienced many other gestures of the Movement but had never been able to go on vacation because my region’s vacation time had not matched m...
I met Communion and Liberation in Portland. It was what I had been looking for ever since I had entered the Catholic Church from my Protestant upbringing – a place where I could share the faith in community. I have always loved to sing and my job is to le...