Opus Dei

Lent is not about switching life off. It's not a dimmer that plunges us into a grey, joyless survival exercise. It's not a season to just endure until Easter arrives. It's the opposite: it's returning to the place where the heart rests, recovering the desire for real joy. It's a time to clear your vision and let the light back in, to live in color.

Nightingales have to stop and take a breath before they can sing. Lent is like that for us. Do you have the freedom to put your phone down in order to take that breath?

He barely speaks in the Gospels, but his actions tell the story of a man who packed up in the night, trusted a dream, and built a life in an unknown country with nothing to prove and everything to give.

"To be useful, serve," Saint Josemaria wrote. What does that mean for Christians who want to make a difference in the world? How do we avoid the danger of perfectionism?

In a do-whatever-you-want kind of culture, we might think that freedom means having no limits. But are you really free if you don’t know what you want?

What does it actually take to be happy, and why do so many people get it wrong? Harvard professor Arthur Brooks and psychologist Isabel Rojas share the science, the stories, and the surprisingly simple habits that can change everything in the first episode of “The World is Waiting for Us,” a Youth podcast.

Purity is the virtue that protects our capacity to love authentically and completely. It gives us the freedom to see others as God sees them, as persons to cherish. This article is part of a series on the virtues, inspired by St. Josemaría’s homily “Human Virtues.”

Sometimes there are challenges in your life that you may find overwhelming and difficult to bear. Piety is the virtue that helps us trust God's mercy and act and pray with peace, because we recognise ourselves as unconditionally beloved children of God. This article is part of a series on the virtues, inspired by St. Josemaría’s homily “Human Virtues.”

Take some time to stop and think, to be alone with Jesus, to look at your life a little more honestly. Before you begin, try to really take care of this period of prayer: set your phone aside or turn off your notifications, grab a notebook, and place yourself in God’s presence.

The point of the circle is to make space for Jesus to come into the concrete, personal details of your daily life. It shouldn’t end when the person giving it stops talking. In a sense, that’s when it starts: when you pray about it, think about what you heard, struggle to put it into practice, and bring it to your family and friends.