Melanie Rigney's Blog, page 87
June 9, 2015
Promises, Promises
Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod , owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Promises, promises. St. Paul made promises, promises to visit people and churches. But he was a busy man. Sometimes his casual promises couldn’t be fulfilled. Maybe he even knew as 
he was making the promises that there’d be no way they’d be kept; maybe it was just easier to say yes, knowing the ultimate result would be no.
We do the same thing. We agree to help o...
June 8, 2015
Returning Catholic FAQs: About the Rosary
O n Mondays, I answer questions frequently asked by those considering a return to the Catholic Church. How do I know this stuff? I was away for more than 30 years myself, and am the co-author of When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics , a book for pastors and parish leaders interested in this ministry.
Do I have to say the rosary every day if I return to the Church?
No, you don’t have to say the rosary every day… or ever. Many people, including some saints and popes, find the r...
June 3, 2015
Wednesday’s Woman: Blessed Maria Karlowska
The Basics:Born September 4, 1865, in Poland; died March 24, 1935, in Poland; beatified June 6, 1997, by John Paul II; feast day, June 6. Woman religious; social worker.
The Story:Maria learned a seamstress’s trade in Berlin, then joined her sister’s sewing and embroidery shop 
back in what is now Poland’s Pomeranian area. It was there Maria began encountering women who had come to the area from the country in search of work, only to find themselves so desperate that they were working as prost...
June 2, 2015
Of Jealous, Envy… and Love
Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod , owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Who among us hasn’t been there? In today’s first reading, Tobit, the devout and once-wealthy Israelite, has been literally blind for four years. Everyone, including Tobit himself, felt bad for the man. But it turned out he was also blind in a more significant way. He found it impossible to believe that his wife’s work could have been of such a caliber or her empl...
June 1, 2015
On the Nightstand: June 2015
I’m headed for central South Dakota later this month–Oacoma, to be exact, a town of about 450 people that’s nineteen miles from where my great-grandparents homesteaded and twenty-five miles from where my father grew up. We’re having a Rigney family reunion, the first I’ve ever attended. And so, it seemed like the perfect time to reread Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. One of my proudest brushes with fame is having met Norris a decade before she wrote Dakotaat a poetry reading i...
Christ in Our Lives: Letitia Suk
Letitia Suk and I are birthday twins–both first day of summer, June 21 girls-and we’ve known each other more than twenty years.
It took a while before I realized we shared more than our birthdays and a love for Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books, 
though I think she always knew. When we met, I had no faith practice; Tish and her husband were among the founders of a congregation in the Chicago area that would become theVineyard Christian Church of Evanston. Back in the day, Tish invited me t...
Returning Catholics FAQs: Confession and Secrecy
O n Mondays, I answer questions frequently asked by those considering a return to the Catholic Church. How do I know this stuff? I was away for more than 30 years myself, and am the co-author of When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics , a book for pastors and parish leaders interested in this ministry.
I don’t like the idea that another human being, even a priest (or especially a priest) knows what I’ve done.
Our priests are entrusted with being Christ’s representatives—not god...
May 27, 2015
Wednesday’s Woman: St. Mariana de Jesus de Paredes
The Basics:Born October 31, 1618, in Ecuador; died May 26, 1645, in Ecuador; canonized 1950 by Pius XII; feast day, May 26. Mystic, hermit.
The Story:The woman known asthe Lily of Quito lost her parents when she was just four, and was raised by an older sister. At a young age, Mariana wanted to enter a monastery, but God had other plans for her. 
Instead, at twelve she became a hermit in a single room at the house. The only time she ventured out was to go to Mass or serve others. It is said Ma...
May 26, 2015
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You
Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod , owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
For a long time, I was in an online writing group. We each had a nickname, and the one they selected for me was Joy. In fact, Melanie Joy is the pen name for the main character in a novel one of my friends is working on now. Pretty cool.
That said, joy can get pretty difficult for me and I suspect many of you as we all go about bringing souls to the kingdom. For...
May 25, 2015
Returning Catholics FAQs: Confessions and Priestly Presence
O n Mondays, I answer questions frequently asked by those considering a return to the Catholic Church. How do I know this stuff? I was away for more than 30 years myself, and am the co-author of When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics , a book for pastors and parish leaders interested in this ministry.
Why do I have to go to a priest to have my sins forgiven?
Make no mistake: It’s God who forgives your sins, not the priest.
A priest friend of mine describes sacraments as “an ou...
