By Michael Patrick O’Brien– No one reaches the lovely Santa Rita Abbey—the only Trappist monastery in the American Southwest—without taking some kind of a journey. Mine started at another monastery,…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Did you ever hear the phrase “there must be something in the water?” I probably first started to understand this notion fifty years ago, as a…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– One of my most enduring relationships—lasting half a century and counting—is with a 100-year-old poem written by a man I never met. In late 1923, well…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– One day an old law partner of mine—perhaps the quintessential rogue and curmudgeon—looked down at me over his half-moon reading glasses and sneered, “Your problem, Mr.…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I’ve read and loved “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (aka “The Night Before Christmas”) all my life. And to celebrate the poem’s publication bicentennial, now I…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My facts of life in the late 1970s—a self-absorbed teenager and the youngest member of my divorced family—erected barriers that sometimes stymied my boyish notions of…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My favorite moment with a Catholic icon—Our Lady of Guadalupe—occurred when I stumbled upon a painting of her and some red December roses a few years…

By Gary Topping– As I have been writing on this blog recently, I spent the winter of 1959-60 studying at the U.S. Navy School of Music in Washington, D.C.  I…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Many Christians either forget all about Advent or confuse it with Christmas. However, as my Iowa Trappist monk friends always remind me, “Advent and Christmas are…

By Jathan Janove (Guest Contributor)– As the world knows, the Middle East is currently in a state of great turmoil. I’m fortunate to be able to ask questions of Matan…