Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

If we do not fill our mind with prayer, it will fill itself with anxieties, worries, temptations, resentments, and unwelcome memories.

The first Christians were eucharistic by nature: they gathered for “the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” They were formed by the Word of God, the “apostles’ teaching.” When they met as a Church, their worship culminated in “fellowship”—the Greek word is koinonia, communion. The Mass was the center of life for the disciples of Jesus, and so it has ever been. Even today, the Mass is where we experience the apostolic teaching and communion, the breaking of the bread and the prayers.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that water has been a natural sacrament since the dawn of creation. In the age of nature—from Adam through the patriarchs—water refreshed and cleansed humankind.

As Catholics, we are free to cultivate a rich life of piety, drawing from the treasures of many lands and many ages.

Sometimes suffering is what’s best for us, if only because it keeps us from sinning or tempting others to sin.

The Catholic life—the great Christian tradition—is a tremendous inheritance from two millennia of saints in many lands and circumstances.