Loretta Pehanich

Loretta Pehanich is a Catholic freelance writer and the author of 2022: A Book of Grace-Filled Days, Women in Conversation: Stand Up!, and Fleeting Moments: Praying When You Are Too Busy. A spiritual director since 2012, Loretta is trained in giving the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Her involvement in ministry and parish life includes 20 years in small faith-sharing groups and Christian Life Community. Loretta gives retreats and presentations on prayer and women’s spirituality and is commissioned as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist. She and her husband Steve have four children and 10 grandchildren.

The Audacity of Using Imagination in Prayer

Editor’s note: Throughout July, we’re hosting 31 Days with St. Ignatius, a month-long celebration of Ignatian spirituality. In addition to the calendar of Ignatian articles found here, posts on...

Conversations from Reading with Children

Conversations with children can cycle from hilarious to inspirational to challenging. When my son was in preschool, I told him once that I’d slept badly. He asked, “Too many hoots?”...

Just One of Those Things

“It’s just one of those things,” my grandma used to say all the time. It meant that she heard, but she had no helpful comment or answer to my...

A Beautiful Gift at the Beautiful Gate

This story is inspired by Acts 3:1–13. Before meeting the Apostles Peter and John after Christ’s Resurrection, I spent my days unproductively at the Beautiful Gate. Every morning family members...

Baby Jesus and Lent’s Refining

It may be Lent, but I’m thinking about the baby Jesus, thanks to a picture of a friend’s grandson, Owen, asleep in his mother’s arms. God, who arrived on...

An Apostle’s Colloquy with Mary

Imagine one of the Apostles sharing part of his story. I’ve always liked to go to Jesus’ mother for conversation. People sometimes ask me why I speak to Mary instead...