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 … Continue reading
Category: Spiritual Life
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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.
The Trinity and the Efficacy of Marian Consecration
On June 13, 1929, Sister Lucy of Fatima, while yet a Dorothean Sister, was privileged with a vision of the Most Holy Trinity. The vision happened in the convent chapel in Tuy, Spain. The Blessed Trinity appeared, with the Virgin … Continue reading
‘Freemen Established Under Grace’
At the end of the Rule of St. Augustine, the Doctor of Grace — who was also a monk and father of monks — enjoins his disciples to observe its precepts “not like slaves under the law, but like freemen … Continue reading
Judgmentalism and a Free Society
In Saint Paul’s account of the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the Apostle admonishes all who receive our Lord’s Body and Blood to examine their consciences, for “he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not … Continue reading
St. Louis Marie and Baptism
The feast of St. Louis Marie de Montfort coincides this year with Easter Wednesday. This liturgical concurrence provides us with an especially felicitous occasion for considering the sacrament of Baptism. Why? Let us recall two things at the very start. … Continue reading
The Drama of Holy Week
If the Church’s liturgical calendar were a temple of time consecrated to God, what we are fast approaching is that temple’s Holy of Holies. The Church sanctifies every week of the year, but only one, by virtue of excellence, does … Continue reading
Come, Divine Physician
The rich ferial Masses for Lent provide us with much spiritual food for our forty-day sojourn in the desert. Today’s propers focus on Jesus Christ, the divine Physician. The stational Church for today is the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and … Continue reading
Sinners in the Hands of an Affirming Rogerian
In medio stat virtus, or “virtue stands in the middle,” is a tried and true aphorism of the moral life. It means that the correct way of virtue avoids the errors of excess on the one hand and defect on … Continue reading
