Catholic Fire

By Jean M. Heimann Today is the feast day of St. Maximilian Kolbe, one of my favorite saints. A Conventual Franciscan, "St. Max" graciously assisted me during one of the most difficult times in my life - a dark night of the senses - approximately 14 years ago. The Lord led me to seek spiritual direction from a Conventual Franciscan (much like St. Maximilian Kolbe in that he was self-giving and self-sacrificing) who guided me on the path to a closer relationship with Jesus and His Holy Mother. At the time, family members, who lived thousands of miles away were seriously ill, my husband was unexpectedly laid off for several months, and we were facing serious financial difficulties. I was ill and unable to work outside our home. The Lord was showing me the meaning of true humility and total dependence on Him. This is when St. Maximilian Kolbe entered into my life. St. Maximilian Kolbe was born in Russian - occupied Poland on January 7, 1894. His baptismal name was...

"Listen and attend with the ear of your heart." ~ Saint Benedict Growing up in the 40's and 50's, Dolores dreamed of becoming an actress. She tells us that it is the only thing she ever wanted to be. Yet, at the peak of a promising acting career, she abandoned her childhood dream and left Hollywood to enter a cloistered monastery.  In her memoir, The Ear of the Heart , Benedictine nun Mother Dolores Hart, Prioress of Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut,  shares the remarkable account of her calling to the monastic life and the reasons why she has remained steadfast in her vocation for half a century. Her lifelong friend, publicist Dick De Neut assists in disclosing the details, providing a second voice to the narrative. There is a question and answer format that runs through the story, which makes one feel as if they are listening in on the conversation of two friends, as they reminisce over the good old days of Hollywood when Anthony Quinn, Gary Coop...

My earliest memory of my dad is when I was about 4 years old. I remember wanting to retrieve an item on the top of our living room fireplace and standing on the seat of my backless child-sized chair to do so. As I grabbed the item, I fell off the chair, with my underarm sliding into one of the two steel rungs that would have held up the linoleum back on the chair. The blood was pouring out as I cried out in pain and my parents ran over to inspect me. Somehow my dad made the bleeding stop and soon afterwards he repaired the back of the chair. I forgot all about my injury when he fixed my chair so that it was good as new. I knew that I had nothing to fear from that chair anymore and that I had something to sit in that was like new. New anything was rare in our home – dad worked as an ironworker after he returned from World War II and work for him in the winter was rare. As a sergeant in the war with the Fifth Army, dad had been stationed in France and North Africa. He had earned a purple...