(Last time, I promised to follow up Ad Rem 89 with some concrete advice. This will come, God willing, but first something more timely for November.)
Fingerprints burned into a prayer book. A clearly visible charred hand print on a wooden table. Similar marks on shirt sleeves, a night cap, and aprons. These are among the curiosities to be seen in Rome’s Purgatory Museum.
When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, she was asked about her consistent approval of abortion. Repeating her frequently stated stand, she insisted that she is “an ardent, practicing Catholic” and then claimed that no one knows when life begins. Moderator Tom Brokaw promptly told her [...]
Today, the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, there is an interview with me published on the Renew America web site. Brian Mershon, a traditional Catholic journalist interviewed me several months ago, and this is the result:
One year later…the forgotten document: A reaffirmation of the one true Church of [...]
Every evening we come before our Blessed Mother, bringing her a collection of our day’s efforts. She gracefully produces a gift of value and, in November, we are emboldened to ask if any of it could be applied to the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
November is the month dedicated to the Holy Souls, and they are [...]
One of the earliest and most popular editors of the Catholic newspaper, The Boston Pilot, was an escaped “convict.” John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-90) was unjustly sentenced in 1867, by the English, to twenty-three years of penal servitude in Australia for his anti-British activism as a member of the Irish Fenians. He escaped the [...]
In Catholic religious art the color blue, not white, is symbolic of purity. The white wedding gown originated in the nineteenth century in imitation of Queen Victoria who wore white for her wedding to Prince Albert. The blue that brides were instructed to wear “something borrowed, something blue” on the wedding day was in honor [...]
I’m back from this two-week trip to Rome, but I haven’t gotten the Eternal City out of my mind. Not by a long shot. Thus, this entry, which has a ghoulish picture in it. I think it’s an appropriate meditation on death for November.
In Rome there is a famous church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, [...]
The following is a press release from the Catholic Action League, condemning a deal between Boston College and Victoria’s Secret:
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today criticized Jesuit administered Boston College for entering into a business relationship with Victoria’s Secret, the self-described distributor of the “world’s sexiest brands” in women’s lingerie, sleepwear [...]
The first diocese established in North America was not Mexico City or Quebec but Greenland. Viking Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, brought along Catholic missionaries when he sailed to Greenland from Norway in the year 1000. His father, exiled from Norway, had established a colony there in 986 at Brattahlid. Leif was raised [...]
The word “saunter,” which means to “wander about,” is derived from Saint Terre (Holy Land). The connection is this: After the age of the catacombs, with the ascent of Constantine and Theodosius to the imperial Roman throne, Christians were free to make pilgrimages to Palestine. This was always a dangerous journey, especially after the seventh [...]
Zenit News has a very interesting article affirming the fact, with documentation, that Pius XII saw the sun dance in the sky and change colors four times, October 30, 31, November 1, and November 8, 1950. He defined the dogma of Our Lady’s Assumption on November 1 that year. The pope testified to this in [...]
God wanted from all eternity to make us one with Himself. That is why He created us. He wanted not merely to be our Creator, but our Father, giving us the title and the right to say to Him, “Our Father, who art in Heaven.”
Jesus, the Eternal Son of God, who became man, prays for us — after we receive sanctifying grace which divinizes our souls, and after we receive the Holy Eucharist which makes us concorporeal with Jesus — that we “may be one, as Thou Father in Me and I in Thee.” (John 17:21) Holy Communion makes us concorporeal with God-made-man. After receiving It we are one body, one life, one breath, one heartbeat with Jesus.
No one who reads the Bible, God’s book, can fail to see that the whole purpose of creation by God was the divinization of those whom He had created. Our time is to be eternity. Our life is to be everlasting. Our happiness is to be that which God has in being God. In all the prayers of the Catholic Church, one of the most constant utterances is per omnia saecula saeculorum, which means forever and ever.
A saint is a created being who has corresponded completely with God’s intention of divinizing him and making him holy. The word saint comes from the word sanctus in Latin, which means holy. The term sanctifying grace means the divine favor by which God elevates a created being to His own state of holiness, and shares with him the everlasting glory of being God’s own by adoption.
The Communion of Saints is the greatest brotherhood or sisterhood that there ever could be in creation. It is the union of all those who have been sanctified by God. The word saint , used in its highest sense, means someone already in the Beatific Vision whose heroism and holiness, achieved on this earth, have been acknowledged and approved by the Roman Catholic Church. But in a simple and initial sense, anyone can be called a saint who is in the state of sanctifying grace. Saint Paul in his epistles refers to all early Christians living on earth as “the saints.” He does this over thirty times.
Our Lord’s beautiful way of letting everyone know that the early Christians were truly saints was when He said to Saint Paul, who was then called Saul, not “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou My followers?” but “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?”
The greatest of all expressions of Christian belief is the Apostles’ Creed. In the Apostles’ Creed there are twelve articles, each one of which was written by one of the Twelve Apostles. The ninth article of the Apostles’ Creed is the expression of belief that those who are in the state of sanctifying grace are saints, “the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.” Those who die in the state of sanctifying grace, even when they go to Purgatory, are saints. Those who have been purged in Purgatory of all their offenses, and have gone to Heaven, are saints forever. Those who have been outstandingly holy in achieving this goal while on earth are saints in the highest sense.
There are, therefore, three states of sanctity applied to the saints by the Catholic Church. They are: the Church Militant (those who are or can be put in the state of sanctifying grace and are fighting to keep it as living members of the one, true Church); the Church Suffering (those who have died in the state of sanctifying grace and are being purged of their defects in Purgatory); and the Church Triumphant (those who have gone forever to see God and know God as God knows Himself, and are united to God in His eternity, in His infinity, in His glory and in His happiness, forever and ever.)
The word Communion when used in the term Holy Communion means that in our flesh and blood we are made participators of the Body and Blood of Jesus. So intense is this unity in what is called Holy Communion that, after having received it, any Catholic is entitled to say along with Saint Paul, “And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me.” (Gal. 2:20)
God wanted from all eternity to make us one with Himself. That is why He created us. He wanted to be not merely our Creator, but our Father. He wanted to give us the title and right to say with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son, when we speak to God the Father, “Our Father, who are in Heaven.” God the Creator becomes God our Father.
Every little Christian child who has been baptized and who has died before reaching the age of reason — before the age where he can commit any willful mortal sin, or fail to confess the one, true Faith to which by Baptism he belongs — goes immediately to the Beatific Vision. He, or she, is a little saint by sheer grace. There are millions of such baptized infants in Heaven, and they can be prayed to, and they pray for us.
Anyone who wants to be a saint can become one. Our Lord’s challenge in this invitation is most beautiful and clear and definite. “Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you.” (Matt. 7:7)
Those who are meek, who are mourning for holiness, who are hungry and thirsty for what God wants to give them, who are admittedly poor in spirit — shall possess the land, and shall be comforted, and shall have their fill, and theirs shall be the kingdom of Heaven. Those who want to be saints shall receive God’s mercy. They shall see God, shall be called the children of God and shall possess the kingdom of Heaven, if their own sanctification is their first goal and if they want to be saints. They are the salt of the earth. They are the light of the world.
Everyone in the world is called to be a saint. Those who are not Catholics are called to become Catholics. “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.” (Mark 16:15, 16) Everyone who is in the Catholic Church is called to be a good Catholic, or to come back to the state of sanctifying grace through the Sacrament of Penance if he has lost it by sin. Every Catholic in the state of sanctifying grace is called to be holier and holier, so holy that the Church can declare him, or her, a saint.
Anyone who wants to be a saint can become one. Our Lord’s challenge in this invitation is most beautiful and clear and definite. Ours shall be the kingdom of Heaven. We shall possess the land. We shall be comforted. We shall have our fill. All we need to be is meek, and longing with tears for what is to come, and hungry and thirsty for what God has to give us. We are called to be the salt of the earth. God wants us, and will make us the light of the world. That is, if our aim is to be a saint.
Tags: Father Leonard Feeney
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[...] web site. Three classic From the Housetops articles are now on our site: By Father Feeney, we have What a Saint Is; by Mark Alessio, Mary’s Universal Mediation; and Gary Potter’s Dom Prosper Guéranger [...]