Welcome to a quiet corner of the Church’s living heart.
Here you’ll find stories, reflections, and real moments of grace—some raw, some radiant, all rooted in the Catholic faith.
Every Tuesday and Friday, a new reflection is added. Each one invites you to slow down, breathe deep, and remember what matters.
Whether you’re returning to the Church, exploring her for the first time, or simply in need of light—there is something here for you.
Scroll down and read as the Spirit leads.
Catholic Stories & Reflections
The Room with the Soft Yellow Light
At eight years old, I stood beside my father and his father in a small, dark room. A soft yellow light shone down on my mother, who had just taken her own life.
That moment remains with me to this day—burned into my soul.
My father, just twenty-eight at the time, had made mistakes. And the final stroke the devil dealt my mother, eight years later, came not from him—but from her inability to forgive. He had asked for forgiveness. She could not give it.
I carry this memory, and my heart goes out to anyone who’s ever fallen… and gotten back up. To those who have faced the hurt they caused, asked for forgiveness, and to those who have learned to forgive others who failed them.
To my father.
To my mother.
To my family and friends I’ve let down.
Even to those who can neither ask for forgiveness nor offer it—there’s a place in me for you too. A quiet room where the icebergs of this world begin to melt in the light of Christ.
Because above all, it is God—through Jesus—who shows us how to live in a new way. A way of peace, a way of victory. A way that no one has to miss, if only they would open the door.
And the Gospel? The Gospel is that door.
Just as the planets rotate around the sun in perfect harmony, we too can find forgiveness and reconciliation as we rotate around Jesus—the Light, the very Ray of God.
The Garden and the Church
One spring morning in rural Sacramento, California, I was heading to the Mormon church with my grandmother and brother. But first, I went to find my grandpa. He wasn’t coming with us.
My grandpa and I were close. Not just because he would talk to me when others didn’t. Not just because we shared peanuts under the stars. But because we had stood together in that same room with my mother, under that soft yellow light.
He had put his arm around me that day and told me, “It’s okay to cry.”
And he cried too.
My father said little that day. What could he say? But his presence said everything.
Some time after my mother’s death, I found my grandfather in the garden and asked why he didn’t go to church.
“I’m just not good enough, Richy,” he told me.
So I stopped going too.
His garden became my church. And my father’s love from heaven came down to me through him.
At sixteen, my grandfather suffered a stroke. A week later, he asked me to help him to the garden. He reached down, pulled a single weed—and we both staggered back to the house.
The next day, he was gone. So was the garden.
A Hall That Leads to the Cross
Thirty-two years later, with many struggles in between, my Catholic faith brought me back to that room. The one where my mother laid.
Church will never be a fortress that keeps sin out. It’s not meant to be. That room has taught me this.
Church is a battlefield—with the Great Physician at its very core.
Forgiveness is at its very core.
Like that room with the soft yellow light, I have found peace in a place where there seldom is any. From my mother’s room—and yours—there is a hallway that leads somewhere deeper. To the center of every true home. To the very center of our own souls.
There, in that inner room, stands a Cross.
There stands our Savior.
And you want to bring everyone you’ve ever known there. Everyone you’ve ever loved. Everyone you’ve ever hurt—and everyone who’s hurt you.
You want them all to see what Jesus has done—and is still doing—for each of us.
To die with us.
To carry our crosses.
To take us beyond our selfishness into the arms of the Shepherd.
The Cross stands at the center of heaven and earth—the great divide.
On one side: a crucified Savior, piercing the void with a single beam of yellow light, forming a narrow path.
On the other: the radiant light of God exposing the pit of death we’ve been saved from.
Original Sin, Original Blessing
Reflection by Richard W. Horrell
Somehow, original sin—that inner anguish and brokenness that is even beyond our own doing—can become the place where we come in touch with our original blessing.
Somehow our broken father, our limited mother, our neurotic brother, our confused sister, and our own inner struggle push us and create in us a hunger to go beyond the pain.
“My soul is restless,” as St. Augustine says, “until it rests in you, O Lord.”
When we begin to know intimacy with God and to accept others and ourselves as we are, we then begin to speak about “happy guilt” or “happy brokenness.” Our inner struggle is no longer such a burden, but a way to the truth, to the light, to the life.
How could we ever become children of God, embraced by the love of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and be let into the intimacy of the triune life if God hadn’t shown compassion with us, as we are?
Through Jesus’ incarnation we come to know about the inner life of God. It is in our fragile and mortal flesh that God’s original blessing is revealed to us.