“We should strive to keep our hearts open to the sufferings and wretchedness of other people, and pray continually that God may grant us that spirit of compassion which is truly the spirit of God.” —Saint Vincent de Paul. March 2021. I have a close friend who recently was in surgery to have a shoulder… Read More When the Sick Were Expected to Rest When Ill or Broken
And the Deep Truths in Fritz Eichenberg’s ‘The Lord’s Supper‘. 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… Read More Strangers in the Pews
5/14/25/ I don’t know what it is like where you live, but here where I live in, yes, liberal Massachusetts, most immigrants I see on a daily basis appear to be very good and hard working persons. I’ve worked with some myself in the last couple of years taking care of very elderly clients with… Read More Deport Criminals Not Working Refugees Seeking a Way Out of Poverty
“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
Tech Moguls, Financial Elites and the Danger of Oligarchy. “What Marxism got right is this: Social classes exist; some of the time, they have some common interests that conflict with the interests of other classes; and class inequality can, if allowed to grow too extreme, become a major social problem. Conservatives once widely recognized at least the… Read More What Marxism Got Right
“For a more Christian view of life, the best books I have run across are “In Defense of Purity” by Dietrich von Hildebrand … the Encyclical on “Christian marriage” by Pope Pius XI, and the “Nuptial Mass” in the Missal.” — Dorothy Day. Her Faith was ever the same.. The Distributism Review. Dorothy Day wrote, “I… Read More Dorothy Day’s Cross
“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
“substituting the worship of Mammon for that of Christ” “We know in our hearts that Christ has overcome sin and death. We ask ourselves how we can best participate with him in overcoming the iniquity in the cosmos. …We were struck by [Fr. Louis] Bouyer’s statement that, “Man can recover true life and preserve the… Read More Detachment and Voluntary Poverty vs. Avarice and Seeking Power
In one of Saint Therese of Lisieux’s favorite books, End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, the author, Fr. Charles Arminjon (1824-1885) writes among many important things on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. And he draws a most important moral Gospel lesson: “There are circumstances when even… Read More Even the Wicked Are Rewarded In This Life.
“A new generation of communities are integrating hospitality and solidarity with the poor through prayer and Church fidelity, consistent with the vision of the movement’s founders. Emily Lehman, January 10, 2023. National Catholic Register The Catholic Worker movement — with members scattered throughout the U.S. and around the world — provides a compelling encounter with… Read More Putting ‘Catholic’ in the Catholic Worker
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me. O God, forgive me for all the sins of my life; The sins of my youth and the sins of my age, The sins of my body and the sins of my soul, The sins I have confessed and the sins I have forgotten, The sins… Read More Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Forgive Me…
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.
It is not without significance that Divine Mercy Sunday Follows Easter. For Mercy is the fruit of Easter. And Jesus came not to call the righteous but Sinners into his kingdom (Luke 5:32). He came “to seek and to save that which was lost”. Mercy is the revelation of the very heart of God and the Good… Read More Nihilism and the Divine Pity
Catechism of the Catholic Church Avoiding war 2307 The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war. 105 2308 All citizens… Read More Traditional Just War Teaching
