McGrath Institute Blog

The smell of homemade apple coffee cake wafting from the kitchen, mornings waking up without an alarm, ample time to read novels while curled up by my mom’s bookshelves, an affectionate dog whose curious eyes follow me from room-to-room; these are some sure-fire signs that I am home. Even as I traverse the country and the globe, making new homes for myself far from Rhode Island, there is a peace that washes over me upon every return to this place, my first home. 

The busier I become, the more I’m tempted to rush or even decrease my prayer time. But whenever I do this, I neglect the real purpose of my prayer: to set aside time and space to connect with or encounter God.

I find it difficult to remember many specifics about my first semester at Notre Dame. Mostly I just recall a general sense of being overwhelmed, in all senses of the word. It was exciting and exhausting and amazing and lonely and everyone was so smart and so impressive and just so everything. Some days I would run from class to class to activity, and suddenly it was 8 PM and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. It’s not that I didn’t want food – I was literally so busy that I had forgotten to eat. Busy with many, many good things, to be sure – but there was just so much to do!

Revered for her heroic virtue, radical hospitality and contributions to the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day is the epitome of Christian love. But is she a saint? In her own words, she could do without the title. Dorothy was known to say bluntly, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily."