Resources
Everything here is open to anyone. There is no account to make, nothing to pay, and nobody to talk to unless you want to.
Learn
Articles and Guides
Everything written to be read, in one searchable place: what spiritual direction is and how to find a director, discernment, and the practical guides below. Filter by topic or search for what you need.
What Is Spiritual Direction?
The first article in a short series on the thing this site exists for: what a spiritual director does, what the Church says about it, who it is for, and how it differs from confession and therapy.
Saint Profiles
Who the saints were, what they are patron of, when their feast falls, and what each one has to offer someone praying now. Written from authoritative Catholic sources and cited line by line, so you can check anything you read.
Saint of the Day
Today’s saints and celebration in the calendar for the United States, with links to their profiles and to the day’s readings. Every other date of the year has a page of its own as well.
Pray
Prayers
The prayers of the Catholic tradition in English, searchable by name, by another name for the same prayer, or by what you are actually facing. Each one carries a note saying what it is and when people pray it, and every text names the published source it was taken from.
Novenas
Nine-day prayers, taken word for word from public-domain prayer books, with a note on when each is traditionally begun and what a novena is.
Lectio Divina
The old monastic way of praying with Scripture, step by step: reading slowly, reflecting, responding and resting in the text, with passages to start from.
Stations of the Cross
Where the devotion came from, the fourteen traditional stations and the scriptural stations, and how to pray them in church, with a parish, or at home.
Liturgy of the Hours
The Church’s daily prayer, explained for a beginner: what the hours are, how one is put together, which books to use, and where to start.
Sacraments & Liturgy
Examination of Conscience
Questions to bring before confession, arranged by the Ten Commandments and the precepts of the Church, with what the Catechism says about each.
Preparing for Confession
What actually happens in the sacrament of Penance, step by step: the examination of conscience, contrition, the confession itself, absolution, and the penance. Written for someone who has been away a long time and is not sure how it goes any more.
Understanding the Mass
A walk through the Mass in order — what each part is, why it is there, and when the congregation stands, sits and kneels. Includes what changes across the seasons and holy days, and how the Ordinary Form and the older Latin Mass differ.
Rites of the Church
One Church, many liturgies: the Roman Rite most Americans know, the Ambrosian Rite of Milan, and the Eastern Catholic Churches with their own liturgies, calendars and law.
Feast Days
Every date of the year with its saints and feasts, and what the day is in each of the next few years when a Sunday or a season takes precedence.
Liturgical Calendar
The Church’s year for the dioceses of the United States: every Sunday, solemnity, feast and memorial, with its rank, its liturgical color, and whether it is a holy day of obligation. Three years, on a calendar you can look a date up in.
About these pages
These pages are written from authoritative Catholic sources — the Catechism, the Code of Canon Law, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the documents of the Holy See — and every claim is cited to the place you can check it.
They do not reproduce the texts of the liturgy. The English translation of the Roman Missal belongs to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy and the Lectionary readings to the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and we are not licensed to publish either. Where you need the words themselves, these pages say where to find them.
They describe the Roman Rite and the law of the Latin Church, which is what most Catholics in the United States know. If you belong to one of the Eastern Catholic Churches, your liturgy, calendar and fasts are your own Church's; the rites of the Catholic Church explains how they fit together.
GraceBook is not a publisher of liturgical books, and nothing here is the text to be used in the liturgy. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.