Category Archives: Merridith Frediani

Feb 22 2023

Ash Wednesday / Miércoles de Ceniza

Click here for daily readings We are reminded today to give alms, pray, and fast. We remember that we don’t do these things for the world, but rather we do them for God and our Father who sees in secret will reward ...

Jul 11 2022

Loving God First / Amar a Dios Primero

Click here for daily readings This Gospel is challenging. Loving anyone more than I love my family feels impossible. It is hard thinking that God gave me these people to journey through life with only to say “love t...

Jun 06 2022

Mary Our Mother

Click here for daily readings In addition to giving himself in the Eucharist, Jesus shared his mother with us too. When he told John, “Behold your mother,” we all received a spiritual mother and she’s a ...

May 09 2022

I Know My Sheep

Click here for daily readings Our practice is to attend 8:30 Sunday Mass but sometimes that doesn’t work out. One Monday after such a time, I ran into my priest and he asked where we were the preceding day. “I...

Apr 04 2022

God Will Save You

Click here for daily readings There are four poignant verses in the story of Susanna that exemplify the battle between good and evil. The two elders saw Susanna’s beauty, and treating her as an object instead of a p...

Mar 13 2022

Our Mountaintop Experiences

Click here for daily readings Last summer I attended a Theology of the Body course and had a mountaintop experience. A diverse group of people from around the world came together to learn about St. John Paul II’s te...

Feb 18 2022

Whoever Is Ashamed Of Me

Click here for daily readings Being ashamed of someone implies a familial relationship, a deep level of caring. We can get mad at people in whom we have no emotional investment. Being ashamed is reserved for t...

Jan 09 2022

You Are God’s Beloved Child

Click here for daily readings While admiring photos of a friend’s daughter I thought that how she feels – the pride, love, and joy – is how God feels about us. Our love for our own children is mirr...

Dec 24 2021

Jesus is Born!

Click here for daily readings In preparing for Christmas in Italy, a family will assemble an intricate, detailed Nativity Scene called a presepe. This custom was started by our beloved St. Francis of Assisi on Chris...

Nov 28 2021

Happy New Year!

Click here for daily readings Happy New Year! Today is the first day of the new Liturgical Year as well as the first Sunday of Advent. Today we begin our watch. Today we begin to prepare for the birth of our Lord. The day...

Oct 28 2021

Our True Identity

Click here for daily readings One of my daughter’s friends announced that she is non-binary, changing her name to Shawn, and using they/them pronouns. In response to questions she said she is more comfortable with t...

Sep 28 2021

Living Righteously

Click here for daily readings In today’s reading from 1 Peter for the memorial of St. Wenceslaus, we hear about righteousness and suffering. “Righteous” is a tricky word. It’s associated with surfe...

Aug 29 2021

First Fruit

Click here for daily readings Imagine “nothing.” In the beginning there was nothing. From nothing God brought into existence everything. When I try to imagine what nothing is, I envision complete darkness, but...

Jul 28 2021

Giving it All

Click here for daily readings It is good for me to remind myself, when I get mired down in the daily mess of life, that my time on earth is transitory. In the entirety of my existence, beginning with conception and contin...

Jun 23 2021

Be Like Abram

Click here for daily readings There’s a detail in today’s First Reading that was brought to my attention several years ago which changed the way I see this story now. Abram was questioning God’s plan. Go...

May 29 2021

Swimming Upstream

Click here for daily readings I think it’s interesting that as a practicing Catholic I am counter-cultural. It’s not a label I expected to be slapped to my shoulders. In today’s Responsorial Psalm I&rsqu...

Apr 20 2021

Jesus is the Bread of Life

Click here for daily readings A while back, I went through a faith reversion and I was participating in a small faith sharing group. One morning I told the group I had felt empty when I went to a non-Catholic church for a...

Mar 23 2021

Winter Waves

Click here for daily readings The wind today is particularly aggressive and our little portion of Lake Michigan is turbulent. As I drove up the lakefront after work I noticed how violent and unsettled the water was. I cou...

Feb 25 2021

Persistence In Prayer

Click here for daily readings We hear in today’s reading and Gospel about the importance of not just prayer, but persistence in prayer. Queen Esther spends the day praying to God for help in freeing her enslaved peo...

Jan 26 2021

Our Families and God’s Family

Click here for daily readings Families are messy. From the outside, a family can appear ideal but underneath it all, every family, even the one that seems perfect, has issues by virtue of the fact that all families are co...