“The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same… Read More Saints of Flesh and Blood
We immerse ourselves daily in news, in reports, in never-ending drama and events. We see or hear the sins of many, many others, endlessly; but do we neglect our own souls, our own need for healing? Thomas a Kempis teaches, “Rest from the inordinate desire of knowledge, for therein is found much distraction and deceit.… Read More Saint Francis de Sales’ Consoling Words on Forgiveness and Self knowledge
With respect to the ongoing controversies about the value of both Catholic ecumenism and the Sainthood of Pope Paul VI, Inez Fitzgerald Storck, in reply to a question regarding her previous review of Paul VI: A Divided Pope by Yves Chiron, writes in this month’s New Oxford Review: “As my husband, Thomas Storck, points out… Read More Ecumenism? Paul VI? Inez Fitzgerald Storck
By Robert Coles |The New Oxford Review.September 1983. Note: Edith Stein was martyred in 1942 (aged 50) at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Gau Upper Silesia, German-occupied Poland. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Cologne on May 1, 1987. Among the 20th-century conversions to Roman Catholicism, that of Edith Stein is surely one of the most edifying and memorable.… Read More Edith Stein’s Cross
Physical condition Besides the stigmata which he bore most of his life and the lifelong periods of the dark Night of the soul, “Padre Pio’s medical reports [from the time he was a young man and then friar], as was evident from the symptoms mentioned in the letters, never showed a clean bill of health.… Read More The Divine Illnesses and “Wasted Body” of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
Father Gabriel of St Mary Magdalene, O.C.D., The Marian Life, Divine Intimacy “The high place which Mary, as the Mother of God, occupies in the work of our sanctification fully justifies our desire to live intimately with her. As children love to be near their mother, so we as Christians want to live with Mary,… Read More By Means of the Beatific Vision
Perhaps most Catholics know her story. Saint Margaret of Castello was born into a well-to-do family near Florence, Italy in 1287. To the great distress of her parents, upon her birth they discovered that she suffered from a variety of severe physical ailments. She was a dwarf, had a curved spine that left her hunched… Read More Patron St. Margaret of Castello
“Sleep,” the Saints show, “is like food; some require more than others” By Fr. Aloysius Roche “We must be sure that even the most mortified among the saints were as glad to get to bed as we are. “When a man really loves God,” St. Philip Neri said, “he comes to such a state in… Read More The Sleep of Saints
Ireland, February 1st, Feast of Saint Brigid, 2021. Catholicarena.com. 21st Century Ireland is desperately grasping for an identity. It sometimes defines itself against British identity, yet it has found itself increasingly becoming a subculture of Britain both financially and culturally. Some often cast it as being distinct from American culture, yet many Irish children are… Read More No, St. Brigid of Kildare Was Not a Pagan Feminist Abortionist
John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD)Doctor of the Church. [Homily Two on the Gospel of St. Matthew by St. John Chrysostom] “But tell me, who of you that stand here, if he were required, could repeat one Psalm, or any other portion of the divine Scriptures? There is not one. And it is not this… Read More St. John Chrysostom: The Word of God for the Wounded
…Last Sermon on the Immaculate Conception by Pope John Paul II Wednesday, 8 December 2004 1. “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” (Lk 1: 28). We address the Virgin Mary several times a day with these words of the Archangel Gabriel. Let us repeat them with fervent joy today, on the Solemnity… Read More “By One and the Same Decree.”
“David Robert Starkey (born 3 January 1945) is an English historian and radio and television presenter, with views that he describes as conservative. The only child of Quaker parents, he attended Kendal Grammar School before studying at Cambridge through a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King Henry VIII‘s household. From Cambridge, he moved to the London School of Economics, where… Read More David Starkey: Sir Thomas More and Martyrdom
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
St. Catherine of Siena Love from ‘Eternal Goodness’. Eternal Goodness, you want me to gaze into you and see that you love me gratuitously,so that I may love everyone with the very same love. You want me, then, to love and serve my neighbors gratuitously, by helping them spiritually and materially as much as I… Read More St. Catherine of Siena. Feast Day April 29.
James M. Patterson, April 2020First Things Magazine C-Span: The important lecture of Thomas Reeves on America’s Bishop (including an the account of his many sufferings and persecutions). Watch it here. Fulton J. Sheen is defined in popular imagination by the persona he adopted on Life Is Worth Living, his Emmy-winning television program. During each episode, the… Read More Taking Sheen Seriously
“Our Lady of Walsingham is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary venerated by Roman Catholics, Western Rite Orthodox Christians, and some Anglicans associated with the Marian apparitions to Richeldis de Faverches, a pious English noblewoman, in 1061 in the village of Walsingham in Norfolk, England. Lady Richeldis had a structure built named “The Holy… Read More Holy Mass. Daily from Walsingham.
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