Articles by Jenny Uebbing
Holy Mysteries! 12 Investigations into Extraordinary Cases
Mar 25, 2021 / 16:31 pmA few weeks ago while making the circle around our block, a friendly neighbor lady synched up with the snail’s pace my 7-year-old daughter and I were keeping. We made friendly conversation, Evie contributing bits and pieces in the form of loose associations for which kindergarteners are renowned.
New children’s book blends the genius of two beloved Catholic artists during the season of Resurrection
Mar 16, 2021 / 14:01 pmFans of beloved children's illustrator Tomie DePaola will be delighted by this newly released imprint of an Easter title; his style is immediately recognizable in his signature saturated colors and fanciful depictions of animals and nature in “Petook, the Rooster Who Met Jesus.”
Book Review: Our Not-Quite-Holy Family
Mar 2, 2021 / 00:00 amMost parenting books fall into one of two categories: hopelessly aspirational – these often being written by relatively new parents or “parenting professionals” with an alphabet of letters after their names – or else the combat manual variety, pitting child against parent as intractable adversaries and filled with dispassionate bullet points for behavioral modification.
Why Blessed is She's founder says she's blessed
Dec 28, 2019 / 07:00 am“What makes Blessed is She different is that it’s not about one person, there is no cult of personality. It’s all focused on Christ.”
How a search for a church, and for truth, led this Protestant family to Catholicism
Jun 29, 2019 / 03:18 amAllison DeVine’s conversion began in a preschool classroom.
How this mom of disabled children is helping others to 'accept the gift'
May 25, 2019 / 03:00 amHow one mom launched a conference for the parents of children with special needs
'Back in February'- How an unexpected pregnancy led to joy
Apr 2, 2019 / 10:48 amAt 23, Alexa Hyman discovered she was pregnant. This is her story.
St. Maximilian Kolbe and living in the present tense
Aug 14, 2014 / 00:00 amOn August 14th the Catholic Church celebrates the life of a man who died wearing the notorious stripes of Auschwitz. He lived a life of professed celibacy, poverty, and obedience, and he met his martyrdom not at the end of a sword on a battlefield, but in a dimly lit bunker filled with the stench of human waste and decaying flesh. His death was meant to make him feel powerless. It was his humiliating death, however, which would engrave his name in the annals of human history, and in the trophy room of heaven.St. Maximilian, born Raymund Kolbe in the kingdom of Poland, joined the conventional Franciscans with his brother, Francis, at the age of 13. He enrolled in minor seminary after illegally crossing the border between Russia and Austria-Hungary and was accepted into the novitiate when he turned 16. He took the name Maximilian Maria to honor Mary, whose cause he would champion all his life.During St. Maximilian's doctoral studies in Rome, he become convicted of the need to fight the growing influence of Freemasons and other demonic forces warring against the Catholic Church, and so he founded the Militia Immaculata, a movement dedicated to the spread of devotion to Mary's Immaculate Heart. At the peak of the MI's influence, their magazine circulated to one million monthly subscribers, thanks to Kolbe's media savvy and use of cutting edge techniques in radio and publishing. His health was not great. He'd suffered a bout of tuberculosis in his youth which left him frail, and he routinely pushed himself beyond reasonable human limits even for a person in good health. This was not a man who lived in the future; his concern was solely for the good he could do in the present moment.St. Maximilian's efforts in the MI took him around the globe to Japan, India, and finally home to Poland where, at the outbreak of WWII, he was able to shelter more than 2,000 Polish Jews from Nazi aggression. When the Gestapo discovered his efforts, he was taken into custody and imprisoned at Auschwitz. It was May of 1941.A few months later, toward the end of July, there was a break out in the camp. To give an example to their captives, the Nazis randomly selected 10 men to be executed in retaliation for the escape. They were to be starved to death in an underground bunker. One of the men selected to die cried out in anguish at his sentencing: "my wife, my children!" Fr. Maximilian stepped forward."I am a Catholic priest," he stated simply, "I wish to die for that man."Living in the moment. Embracing his present cross as simply the next right thing to do, St. Maximilian willingly entered the underground bunker that would become his tomb.Reports from the prison guards tell the rest of the story. Each morning when they checked on the condemned men, Fr. Kolbe would be found kneeling or standing cheerfully in the center of the group. As hunger and thirst drove the prisoners to madness, forcing them to drink their own urine and lick the walls of the bunker for moisture, Fr. Kolbe was there, accompanying them. He was one of them and yet somehow calm in the midst of the horror. He encouraged them, he prayed with them, he heard their confessions if they so desired, and then, at the end, he alone remained conscious, watching over them and walking with them into the valley of the shadow of death.His heroism didn't display itself in the face of a firing squad. When he stepped forward to save the life of Franciszek Gajowniczek, he was simply doing the next right thing. He lived in the moment, accepting the challenges of his situation as they presented themselves. He didn't think about 2 weeks without food or water trapped in a small room filled with panic and death. He simply saw a need, recognized his capacity to do something about it, and stepped out in faith.When at last, on August 14th, 1941 the Nazis decided they needed the starvation bunker for new victims, Fr. Kolbe was given a lethal intravenous dose of carbolic acid to stop his lion's heart. He held out his left arm as the doctor approached him, offering himself up, until the very end, as a willing victim. His body was cremated without ceremony or reverence, like so many other millions. But his heroism echoed throughout the camp, a beacon of hope in a dark hell of suffering and human misery.Fr. Maximilian Kolbe was canonized in 1981 by Pope St. John Paul II, who declared him “a martyr of charity.”And Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man whose life St. Maximilian Kolbe ransomed? He made it home to Poland, where he lived to be 95 years old. But every year on August 14th he returned to Auschwitz to pay his respects to the saint whose life consisted of a series of choices for the present good, culminating in a sacrifice of the highest order.
Gloria's Miracle
Oct 30, 2009 / 00:00 amBook written by Jerry Brewer. San Juan Publishing. 256 pages. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-9707-3997-1Gloria's miracle was not to belong to her alone. In a moving and candidly written tale of a young heroine's battle for life, first-time author and sports writer Jerry Brewer gives his readers a play by play account of one of the greatest games he's ever covered.Brewer, a sports columnist for The Seattle Times, won a coin toss for a story that would change his life: covering the story of a high-school basketball coach and his family of 9, struggling to beat back the odds of a deadly childhood cancer. But the Strauss family was no ordinary family, and the story – a welcome respite from Brewer's usual beat covering college sports and NFL football – would change his life forever.Gloria Strauss had been battling neuroblastoma for 4 long years when Jerry Brewer first made her acquaintance. Her bright eyes and indomitable spirit gave no immediate indication of her daily sufferings, though Jerry would come to recognize her moments of pain and struggle in the months to come.Before Jerry ever met young Gloria, he spent months interviewing Doug Strauss, her father. Gradually, he found himself drawn into this family's story of love. In spite of the cancer – or maybe because of it – Jerry began to recognize an otherworldly strength in this young father of seven. Doug's enthusiasm for life, conviction of God's mercy and intention to heal his little girl, and his passion for his Catholic faith were all completely foreign to Jerry – and deeply attractive.A few months into his “friendship” with Doug, Jerry reluctantly agreed to attend one of the numerous prayer services held regularly in the Strauss family home. On Gloria's behalf, community members, high school students, fellow parishioners, and neighbors would gather for evenings of intense communal prayer, recitation of the rosary, and fervent supplication for Gloria's recovery. The evenings were richly comforting to the Strauss family but were even more powerful for those who gathered to pray with them.“Within thirty minutes, the living room was full, plump like a buffet belly. Forty people fit where they could, fit where they could not, in kitchen chairs, in desk chairs, on the piano bench, on the floor, on the fireplace hearth, against the wall, behind the couch, atop the coffee table. They gripped their rosaries and grinned upon eye contact. Prayer warriors, they called themselves. They were here for Gloria.”Jerry was shaken by the faith of the individuals who came to pray with Gloria. They were highschoolers, neighbors, student athletes, family members … and they believed. As he struggled to make sense of his own place in the world and questioned whether God did in fact exist, the Strauss family and their supporters were storming Heaven with prayers for Gloria's Miracle, believing wholeheartedly in God's existence … and in His power to heal their friend and daughter.Gloria's Miracle is as much a story of one family's triumph over tragedy as it is a spiritual autobiography of the author himself. Through his reflections and observations of the Strausses, Jerry manages to capture the essence of family life, of holy family life, and of what it means to ask for – and expect – miracles.
Stay Home, Stay Happy: Ten Secrets to Loving At-Home Motherhood
Sep 11, 2009 / 00:00 amBook written by Rachel Campos-Duffy