In Proclamation, Word, Deed … against all infiltrations, apostasy and persecutions. 2 Cor 4:5-7 – 5 “For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord; and ourselves your servants through Jesus. 6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of… Read More As Francis Decreases We Pray Jesus Christ Increases
“In the first book, O The-oph′ilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.”— Acts 1, 1-2 “The fortieth day after Easter Sunday, commemorating the Ascension of Christ… Read More The Glorious Feast of the Ascension
Immanuel Kant wrote, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. [‘Nonage’ is the immature inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance]. He continues: “This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know!… Read More Immanuel Kant, Philosopher of the New Light
St. Joseph the Worker Shrine, Lowell, Massachusetts. Jesus calms the storm. This Week’s Messagefrom Fr. AmesseApril 23, 2023 In a month, we will celebrate the “40 Hours Devotion.” The Holy Eucharist will be exposed on the altar for approximately 40 hours. St. John Neumann made the 40 Hours Devotion popular as Bishop of Philadelphia (1852-1860). … Read More He Is Here. And He is Not Silent.
“It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, not merely to profess. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are… Read More Confessing the Faith
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.” Are there any who are devout lovers of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Are there any who are grateful servants? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord! Are there any… Read More He is risen. St. John Chrysostom. St. Francis de Sales.
Jesus Christ Shows That Suffering and Peace are not Opposites. We have all been brought up in a culture—which is increasingly becoming a global culture—which says that through some uncanny stroke of good (?) “luck ” or “chance” we have been born into theworld; we exist; so now we have to squeeze every last pleasure… Read More The Cross: “Breaking With Sin.” 1 Pet. 4.
G. K. Chesterton: “In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon… Read More Man could do no more… Pilate “washed his hands of the world”
Jesus Christ, “given unto us” (Isa 9.6): This true Man has been the subject of the mostsublime contemplation, worship, and love imaginable for over two thousand years. Even agnostics marvel over his Person and teachings. And His enemies, of whatever variety, obsess over Him to this very day. For in that crib, the Church attests,… Read More Jesus Christ, Light of the World
America… “not in any sense Christian” “….she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain o f scandal she has spread.” — Dante, The Inferno, canto V, 57 The fatal mischief in the U.S. Constitution was in the purposeful ambiguity embedded in the Enlightenment concept “liberty”. This is what logically led us… Read More America and Seductive False ‘Liberty’.
Francis X. Maier writes. , “… We live in unsettled times. Elites in the developed world have been shedding Christianity like dead skin for decades. Their grip on our popular entertainment, news content, and emerging technologies has dragged many millions of otherwise good people along with them. Big corporations wield inordinate political power. Unelected government… Read More Not Comfortable but Free
Rom. 8:22 For we know that every creature groans and travails in pain, even till now. 23 And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope.… Read More The Whole Creation Groans
The other side of the Eucharist is friendship. It often happens that week after week, year after year, Christians sit and kneel next to practical strangers in church on Sundays. They leave Mass as they entered, nodding and saying hello to people they do not ever really come to know. And in our time it… Read More The Deep Truths in Fritz Eichenberg’s ‘The Lord’s Supper’
First, the Problem. The famous Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson writes, surely accurately, in his Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, “… at the very place where the Summa of Alexander and the Commentary of St. Bonaventure undertake to show that the existence of God is evident, St. Thomas devotes an article to proving that it… Read More Gilson, Saint Thomas and The Self-Attesting God
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” — Matt. 2:18 Ireland: Irish journalist John Waters, who started his journalistic career writing about youth and Rock ‘n Roll, sadly notes, “There was a moment close to the beginning… Read More Lamentation For Ireland. John Waters
There are many people who will cite the West as something which is under threat and something for which we should be prepared to fight to defend. Depending on which defender of the West is pontificating, the threat comes from Russia, or from Islam, or from China, or from some enemy within the West itself.… Read More Is the West Worth Defending? By Joseph Pearce.
The New Oxford Review. In our October [1987] symposium, Thomas Molnar, an authority on all things French, threw out the intriguing morsel that the New Oxford Review seems to be following in the footsteps of Esprit, the French Catholic review founded in 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier (who lived from 1905 to 1950). Although we would… Read More Are We “Personalists”?
‘In him we live and move and have our being’…‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ — Acts 17:28 A Breviary of Philosophy from the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas by Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper The Creature is vanity in so far as it comes from nothingness, but not in so far as it is an… Read More St. Thomas On Being and Nothingness.
Patience in Penance. Fourteen Years the Abbot spent on Overcoming One Fault. “Love demands a complete inner transformation – for without this we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother… And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self. No matter how hard we try, we resist this… Read More Perseverance, Patience, Penance.
When Magicians work their tricks, people applaud, are charmed, and wonder aloud how they ever did that. But with the Lord Jesus Christ it was very different. His saving deeds evoked fear, the sign of a real miracle occuring in the midst of sane men and women. As witness the Gospel history: “A large crowd… Read More Jesus of Nazareth vs Magicians and Empiricists
Is A Personal God Improbable? Or is it we who are improbable?Atheism has traditionally scoffed at belief in a God who is Personal or SupraPersonal. I’ve always found their position to be a counterintuitive curiosity. One of the reasons why is that I find myself, a personal being, to exist. I am here. You are… Read More I Am Therefore I Think
History: “In the idyllic pastoral setting of East Anglia, in the county of Norfolk, and located just over one mile from Walsingham, stands the little Slipper Chapel, a shrine dating back to the mid 14th century. Within this tiny shrine is kept the familiar Catholic statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. At this point, pilgrims… Read More Daily Mass at The Slipper Chapel, Walsingham
I admire much that Jordan Peterson has done and said. Very much. But I cannot accept his thought entirely regarding the question of Meaning in our lives and times, which he and others have publicly discussed, and which many admire. To the contrary, it is Jesus Christ, “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8),… Read More Jordan Peterson on Meaning
O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?” These words of St. Paul climax his mystical and historical experience of the risen Christ who triumphed over death and all the terrors of death, which, until the resurrection, shadowed every one of man’s hopes, accomplishments, and joys. St. Paul was no dreamer.… Read More Christ’s Victory Over Death & Post-Modern Despair
The Silence of the Tomb. “Today, there is a great silence. The Savior has died. He rests in the tomb. Many hearts were filled with uncontrollable grief and confusion. Was He really gone? Had all their hopes been shattered? These and many other thoughts of despair filled the minds and hearts of so many who loved… Read More Holy Saturday
By Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. O Jesus Crucified, teach me the science of the Cross; make me understand the value of suffering. 1. The Passion of Jesus teaches us in a concrete way that in the Christian life we must be able to accept suffering for the love of God. This is… Read More The Value of Suffering in Christ
John E. Fagan “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come… Read More John Paul II on Faith, Reason and Nihilism
Our Lord Jesus Christ gives up(1) on none. Nobody. God help us from ever holding on to any Pharisee within. Brennan Manning writes of brokenness, “My life is a witness to vulgar grace — a grace that amazes as it offends. A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same… Read More Vulgar Grace
by Malcolm Muggeridge The coming of Jesus into the world is the most stupendous event in human history. Is our [modern] skepticism one more manifestation of our having–in Bonhoeffer’s unhappy phrase–come of age? It would be difficult to support such a proposition in the light of the almost inconceivable credulity of today’s brain-washed public, who… Read More Jesus the Man Who Lives, And the Credulity of Our Age
Their lives amazingly intersected. And he prayed in her convent’s chapel. Hear the story. —- Divine Mercy and the Lonely
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, the director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, told CNA “The images of suffering that the Pietà always implies I think will deeply touch people. I think that visitors will be moved to see these works,” he said. The image of the Pietà evokes “the personal suffering of mothers who hold their… Read More How Michelangelo’s 3 Pietàs speak to a suffering world
“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world— St. Paul, Galatians 6:14 “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and… Read More Kerygma. Finding Our Way Home Again.
“I wrote Letters from the Desert sitting on the arid dunes of the Sahara. They cost me ten years of suffering, and I love them for that. I tried to place myself naked, poor and alone, in the presence of God’s eternal majesty, totally committed to penetrating the logic of the Gospels, which is inexhaustible. I tried… Read More Carlo Carretto on the Pain of Failing
By Brian Kelly. It is written (Ezechiel 18:22): “I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live.” Saint Thomas in the third part of his Summa Theologica, Q. 86, art. 1 uses this quote from Ezechiel in his Sed Contra to refute the… Read More Forgiveness. “I Will Not Remember Their Sins”
Recent discoveries are making Jewish, secular and agnostic scholars reconsider a century’s worth of skepticism towards the New Testament accounts of Jesus. (Pinned Dec. 18, 2022) By Robert Hutchinson, via The Blaze.com. The entrance to the Mary of Nazareth International Center in central Nazareth doesn’t look like much. It’s just a simple doorway off narrow… Read More New Discoveries About Jesus of Nazareth
Catholic Critique 