Category Archives: Spiritual Life

Spiritual Life

This category, of course, can cover many topics. We try to limit it in this section to articles that deal with the inner life of the soul elevated by grace or wounded by sin: virtue and vice, heroic Catholic men and women as seen under the light of the particular virtue they exemplified, the cardinal virtues, spiritual formation, growth, and purgation, and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

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In Praise of Holy Desires

It is not true to say that the disciples of Father Feeney are against desire.1 Our public witness is directed toward bringing people to believe the true Faith, and to desire to enter Christ’s Body, the Catholic Church. God Himself, who inspires holy desires, will see to it that they are fulfilled (cf. Phil. 1:6). Desire, simply considered, is a motion toward a good we … More →


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Saint Augustine on Friendship

Thanks to Scribd, we now have a better way of posting PDF files on Catholicism.org. As a “test run,” I’m posting an older piece, a paper on St. Augustine’s notions of Christian friendship. It has become one of the more popular pieces on the Internet on the subject. This paper was written in preparation for a talk at the 2006 Saint Benedict Center Conference. My … More →

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Honoring the First Amerindian Saint

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha is scheduled to be canonized on October 21, 2012. Less than a month before that, she will be honored by the pilgrims walking the annual “Pilgrimage for Restoration” to Auriesville, New York. Below, I reproduce a press release that explains this year’s theme, which explicitly mentions the holy Mohawk virgin every Catholic American should love. In promoting this worthwhile event, I feel … More →


Posted in Catholic America, Catholic Living, Holy Places, Special Events, Spiritual Life, «Ad Rem» A Weekly Email Message from the Prior | 2 Comments
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Auriesville Pilgrimage for Restoration Mixes Tradition, Vitality

The 2012 annual Pilgrimage for Restoration is scheduled for Friday-Sunday, September 28-30. This will mark the seventeenth time that a merry band of Catholic pilgrims cuts a path from Lake George to Auriesville, New York, doing penance all the way. This year’s theme, in honor of the soon-to-be-canonized Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, is “Restoration of True Devotion to Mary, in the footsteps of Saint Kateri.” Rising very … More →


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Saint Augustine on Prayer

By the grace of God, your humble servant has recently completed his week-long Lenten retreat, which was followed immediately by the perpetual profession of two of our sisters on Passion Sunday, and today’s joyful Feast of the Annunciation. During my retreat, I was able to spend some quality time with Saint Augustine, in the form of a book that a priest-friend lent me, The Teaching … More →


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Saint John the Apostle at the Transfiguration of Christ: Bl. Fra Angelico

Lenten Transfiguration

Christians are by grace what Christ is by nature. That is to say, the members of Christ’s Body (the Catholic Church) are deified so that we, too, can be called sons of God. By grace, we are so identified with our Redeemer that His joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries become our mysteries, too. (We have termed this elsewhere the “Mystical Incarnation.”) Right now, we are … More →


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Guilt Transformed, Some Lenten Thoughts

The solemn fast of Lent is intended to convert us, to renew us, and to conform us more and more to Jesus Christ. This happens through the three means of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving — which are most powerful when joined with assisting regularly at the Church’s liturgy. One of my pet peeves with the popular conception of Lent is that it is a time … More →

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Penance and the Conversion of America

Lent is on its way. During this penitential season of grace, the Church’s liturgy will put sentiments of penance on our lips and in our minds. She will also enjoin us, in various ways, to do works of penance. In my last Ad Rem, Christ’s Commission and Obama’s Mandate: A Teachable Moment, I made the argument that the Church in America is reaping the bitter … More →


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Simon Bening: The Temptation of Christ

Suggested Lenten Penances

The best penances are those that God sends us. These penances are immediately consequent upon His “will signified,” that is, the natural moral law and any positive law to which we are bound in conscience, e.g., the Church’s laws on fast and abstinence, or the rule of a religious congregation. They are also consequent upon God’s “will of good pleasure,” which we see in the … More →

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What We Have Seen and Heard

The true religion is not a book. It is a communion — a mystical body — by which man is united to God and therefore made holy, beginning in this life a relationship that is meant to continue for all eternity in beatitude. Yes, the true faith is a revelation from on high. Yes, a portion of that revelation has been transmitted to us in … More →

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Fr. Thomas Keating on NPR: Heresy as Mysticism

Saturday, December 24. I went to Keene, N.H. to run errands. On the way, I said a chaplet of the Rosary. While carrying out my errands and on the trip back, I clicked on the local NPR affiliate to see if there was any news worth hearing. It would have been better had I prayed more chaplets of the Rosary.

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Posted in Articles, Current Issues in the Church, Heresies and Errors, Polemics, Spiritual Life | 6 Comments

Eucharistic Adoration Growing Devotion in Lebanon

A group of Lebanese lay Catholics have formed a group called New Creation, with the objective of fostering devotion to Jesus. They took their name from a phrase in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation,” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Read more here.

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The Story We Live By and the Foundations of Our Faith: Implications of the Incarnation and of the Bethlehem Nativity

[Originally authored 13 December 2003, the Feast of Sancta Lucia] At this time of the Christian Feast of the Nativity, when we are also expectantly considering the coming year of 2012 (as was so in 2003) and the pressures of deepening war and religious conflict, we more openly allow ourselves to consider the foundations of things. Did the Incarnation happen? Or was it an illusion, … More →


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Supernaturally Pro-Life Meditations

As something of a follow-up to The Real Gospel of Life, I compiled a small collection of supernaturally pro-life statements that have the authority of Holy Scripture or the Church’s Liturgy. These will help us establish our pro-life priorities, and provide us with abundant material for meditation.


Posted in Articles, Current Issues in the Church, Four Last Things, Spiritual Life | 1 Comment

Holy Father Urges Faithful to Pray the Psalms and Get Familiar With the Liturgy of the Hours

General Audience, Father Z’s site: “I would like to renew my call to everyone to pray the Psalms, to become accustomed to using the Liturgy of the Hours, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline.” Read more from the pope’s address here.

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