By Father Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953. O Lord, increase my confidence in Your help and grant that in this confidence, I may always find courage to begin again. What most distresses souls of good will who are seriously trying to live a spiritual life, is to find themselves falling so many times, despite… Read More The Courage To Begin Yet Again
How to pray in moral anguish. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene shows the way, “O Truth, light of my soul, do not permit the darkness to frighten me. You have allowed me to walk in it, and now I am in obscurity. But even from the darkness, even from there, I have loved You.… Read More Do not permit the darkness to frighten me.
by Michael Davies.From Catholic, October 1996. The Catholic Church was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son made Man. He has promised His Church that She will continue to exist exactly as He constituted her until He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The Catholic Church is the Church that is indefectible. The… Read More Michael Davies on the Indefectibility of the Mass of Paul VI.
“May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the Saints, whatever good you do and whatever evil you endure, be for you a remedy for sin, an increase of grace, and the reward of eternal life. Go in peace”. — Traditional priestly prayer used with… Read More May the Passion Be For You A Remedy
“It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet has so much concern… Read More Michael Davies on the Merciful, Ever Welcoming Church
The Judge Who Brought Compassion in the Courtroom Now Needs Your Prayers. By Colm Flynn, National Catholic Register, Feb.15 Judge Frank Caprio’s courtroom was more than a place of judgement — it became a place of mercy — and now, as he battles cancer, he needs our prayers. When Judge Frank Caprio peered over his… Read More Meet the Kindest Judge in America
What Fulton J. Sheen saw so clearly that others seek to forget: We are only sojourners here in a strange and foreign land. “Our whole life ought to be one continued penance“. — Frs. Francis Spirago, Richard F. Clarke on Penance. Joel 2:12-13 “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all of your heart,with… Read More Repentance and / or the American Dialectic
I awakened this morning unexpectedly thinking of a painful absence, the absence of the sounds of Church bells, which, when we were young, summoned us to to prayer and Mass. Not that we always appreciated this when young to be sure. But it was always there. It was just there, like the rising and setting… Read More The Absence of the Bells
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3 “Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.” – Jeremiah 17:14 A most beautiful offering for the sick of body, soul or mind. Robert Reed today is an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of… Read More Rosary for the Sick. Sorrowful Mysteries.
”Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Prov. 19:21). “Having dismissed the multitude,He went into a mountain alone to pray.”—Matthew 14:23. By St. Alphonsus Liguori,Doctor of the Church. To preserve recollection of spirit or the constant union of the soul with God, three things are necessary:… Read More Silence, Solitude and the Presence of God
By Fr. Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953 Grant, O Lord, that by Your grace I may persevere unto the end. 1. To become a saint, it is not enough to be courageous and patient and to practice the other virtues for a few days or a few months, or even for a few years.… Read More Perseverance
“The first time I saw Brother Lawrence, was upon the 3d of August, 1666. He told me that GOD had done him a singular favor, in his conversion at the age of eighteen. That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be… Read More Brother Lawrence and the Presence of God
By Thomas a Kempis(b)1380 – (d)1471 It is good for us to have sometimes troubles and adversities: for they make a man enter into himself, that he may know that he is in a state of banishment, and may not place his hopes in anything of this world. It is good that we sometimes suffer contradictions… Read More The Utility of Adversity
By Karl Keating, New Oxford Review “…I have a favorite line from Pope Leo XIII. It’s from Rerum Novarum (1891), the first of the social encyclicals. Nearly every pope since his time has written one or more social encyclicals. The line I remember isn’t quite as Leo wrote it. Often we remember lines a little… Read More A Life’s Worth of Failure, an Abundance of Gratitude
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
“The FBI memo cited the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, including a list of organizations the SPLC brands “radical traditional Catholic hate groups.” As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux… Read More The DOJ and Catholics
James 4:2: “you have not, because you ask not.“ The great Doctor of the Church, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, wrote, “The absolute necessity of prayer is taught throughout the Holy Scriptures, and by all the holy Fathers; while, on the other hand, I see that Christians are very careless in their practice of this great… Read More “Those who pray will be saved, those who do not will be lost”
I arise todayThrough a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,Through a belief in the Threeness,Through confession of the OnenessOf the Creator of creation. I arise todayThrough the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism,Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,Through the strength of His… Read More The Prayer and Breast plate of St. Patrick Against All Harms
Their lives amazingly intersected. And he prayed in her convent’s chapel. Hear the story. —- Divine Mercy and the Lonely
Fr. Robert Reed [today auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston and the president of the television network CatholicTV] prays the Sorrowful Mysteries for all who are physically or mentally suffering in our time, and for the dying.
Catholic Critique 