“Faithfully Yours” is the theme of this year’s Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, a national educational campaign of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to celebrate God’s design for married love and the gift of life and to raise awareness of natural family planning methods.
I am a family practice physician who stopped prescribing any form of birth control two years ago. What a relief that was! I was finally able to go to work each day without feelings of anxiety and guilt, which had been my constant companions for many months. Still, it took several trips to the confessional before I felt forgiven for the years that I had ordered contraceptive shots and written out prescriptions for “the pill.”
I had heard the term multiple times as we sat in the marriage prep weekend at the University of St. Thomas on a nice spring day in 2005. I thought it sounded good but convinced myself that it was not for us at the time — maybe in the future, but not now as we were already so busy planning for our upcoming wedding.
Every child is unplanned — even in natural family planning. Why must this be? Because every person, every child, is fully known only by God in his plan. Only the Creator knows completely who and what this new image of God is. To know someone perfectly as God does is to know that person in his origin and his destiny, the child’s place in the large scheme of reality.
Galilee is not only the name of a lake; it is also the name of a region in northern Israel. It is the area where Jesus grew up as a youngster, where he “advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man” (Luke 2:52), and where he began his public ministry.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is part of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, and it contains a sensible, somewhat obscure, short passage on companionship and cooperation between fellow workers.
Danielle Schwartzman was among more than 350 people who took part in the Rite of Election at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Feb. 26. She has been participating in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults with a group at the Basilica, led by Paula Kaempffer.
Every year, hundreds of adults and children in the archdiocese begin a journey to full membership in the Catholic Church. This year 745 people are preparing to receive the sacraments of initiation during the Easter Vigil.
