If only mortals would learn how great it is to possess divine grace, how beautiful, how noble, how precious…No one would complain about his cross or about troubles that may happen to him, if he would come to know the scales on which they are weighed when they are distributed to men. (Saint Rose of[…]
Month: August 2019
Has anyone ever come away from her troubled or saddened or ignorant of the heavenly mysteries? Who has not returned to everyday life gladdened and joyful because his request had been granted by the Mother of God? (Saint Amadeus of Lausanne, Cistercian, +1159)
Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to Heaven. There are others: innocence, but that is for little children; penance, but we are afraid of it; generous endurance of trials of life, but when they come we weep and ask to be. The surest, easiest, shortest way is the Eucharist. (Pope Saint Pius X,[…]
Mourning Travesties and Glaciers
‘Travesty’ does not seem to begin to describe what has happened in a court in Victoria, Australia, with the appeal of George Cardinal Pell on sexual abuse charges being rejected 2 to 1 in a three-judge panel. Readers may peruse the reflections of George Weigl and Matthew Schmitz for the details, all of which point[…]
There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is curiosity. There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is vanity. There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love. (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot, Founder of the Cistercians, +1153)
Epstein and Cultural Free Fall
In the annals of the continuing free-fall of our culture, the French Catholic school board in the Ottawa region has just instituted a high school course in ‘video gaming’. Their justification? Well, it seems ‘gamers’, if good enough – and I use ‘good’ loosely here – can make six-figure incomes. One wonders. Playing video games[…]
The Purifying Fire of Truth
Twentieth Sunday Per Annum (C) August 18, 2019. Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! (Lk. 12:51). ⧾ These words are uncomfortable at first hearing, but they are true. Jesus Christ is truth incarnate and truth divides. We preach Christ crucified, a[…]
Masses, Black and White
Apparently, there is a ‘Black Mass’ scheduled to be held tomorrow in Ottawa, and Archbishop Prendergast has asked his priests to join the laity in praying outside the heavy-metal bar, appropriately, or rather inappropriately, called ‘The Koven’. We should remember that every sacrilegious Mass – one in which Communion is confected or received in a[…]
A Soul, Joyfully Consecrated
On the Solemnity of the Assumption – a fitting and splendid day – the Sisters of Our Lady Immaculate welcomed their newly professed member, Sister Maria Immaculata, who made her final vows in the presence of Bishop Douglas Crosby.. The Mass was glorious, the music – with the Sisters singing under the direction of Sister[…]
As mariners are guided into port by the shining of a star, so Christians are guided to heaven by Mary. (Saint Thomas Aquinas)