creative faith formation resources to savor every liturgical season
Searching for Christmas | Advent The 1965 animated special A Charlie Brown Christmas was predicted to be a flop. Charles Schulz, however, was determined to tell an honest and heartfelt story about the true meaning of Christmas...
The Bones of St. Nicolas | Advent After consecrating the crypt, the Archbishop stretches out to reach into a marble tomb. After a few moments, he reappears, stands, and lifts above his head a crystal vial holding a small amount of clear liquid...
Burning Down Christmas | Christmas The Gälve goat stands today as an international symbol of Christmas. But on New Year’s Eve 1966, someone burned it down. Since then, the goat has been constantly under siege...
When Wine Flows Like Water | Epiphany In the small Portuguese town of São Lourenço do Bairro, residents were stunned when they looked out their windows and saw a river of wine flowing through the narrow streets...
Shine Like Stars | Epiphany The following Sunday, I stood in front of the congregation and made the announcement - Sunday morning worship is cancelled...
Chasing Wisdom | Epiphany Author and art collector Forrest Fenn carefully filled a small, ornate box with gold nuggets, jewelry, and other exotic artifacts. Then he hid the box in the Rocky Mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe...
Meaning in the Margins | Ash Wednesday In 1543, Copernicus knocked humanity off its pedestal at the center of the universe. In 1924, Hubble relegated humanity to the margins...
The Colors of Grace | Lent Granite Springs Church has a clear purpose and mission, but if you search the light-filled atrium entrance, you only find a painting...
Cross Shaped Protection | Lent In 1605, an artillery marshal gave the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse a manuscript containing a recipe for an "elixir of long life," developed by a brilliant but unknown alchemist in the 1500's...
The Georgia Guidestones | Lent In June 1979, a mysterious figure, using the pseudonym Robert C. Christian, approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company with an unusual project...
Seven Miles Into Hell | Holy Saturday With an unquenchable thirst for adventure, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh huddled together inside a reinforced-steel submersible and slowly descended into a dark trench seven miles below the ocean surface…
The Impossible Escape | Easter As the clock struck one-minute, Harry Houdini struggled to free himself. Hidden behind a red curtain, he was holding his breath, hanging upside down in a water-filled glass chamber, feet bound in wooden stocks...
A Messy Hallelujah | Pentecost In May 1970, Professor Galvin Bryars pinned a flier to a bulletin board at England’s Portsmouth School of Art. Scribbled on the paper was a call for students to join a spontaneous orchestra...
Exploring the Divine Mystery | Trinity Sunday In 1991, a nationwide contest was announced. Children in classrooms penned their most creative essays, crossed their fingers, and hoped their submission would be chosen...
The Beam Team | Ordinary Time Inside the Golden 1 Center thousands of fans chant in thunderous unison. Outside, six purple lasers combine to form one beam of light so intense, it touches the heavens...
Monday Morning Mission | Ordinary Time On the west side of Texas, Jeff Bezos is funding an enormous $42 million mechanical timepiece, housed inside a mountain, designed to keep accurate time for the next 10,000 years...
Pandemonium in Paradise | Ordinary Time On a sleepy January morning in 2018, people across the Hawaiian Islands received an alert on their cellphones, televisions and radios: BALLISTIC MISSILE INBOUND TO HAWAII. THIS IS NOT A DRILL...
The Golden Record | Ordinary Time Three years after liftoff, Voyager 1 completed its primary mission. But those involved in the development of the space probe had something more in mind...
The Comeback King | Reign of Christ In a small studio in Memphis, Tenn., Elvis Presley and his newly formed quartet of musicians recorded a song with a pulsing eight-bar blues progression...
