In all that concerns the king, I will be slavishly obedient; if any attack his temporal power, I will shed my last drop of blood for him. But in the things of spiritual jurisdiction which a king unjustly seizes I cannot and must not obey (Saint John Ogilvie, +1615)
Month: March 2025
Humility and the First Sunday of Lent
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time (Lk. 4:13). ⧾ On Ash Wednesday we began our observance of the holy season of Lent. By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert (The Catechism of[…]
The present reflections, now at an end, have sought to recognize, within the “gift of God”, what he, as Creator and Redeemer, entrusts to women, to every woman. In the Spirit of Christ, in fact, women can discover the entire meaning of their femininity and thus be disposed to making a “sincere gift of self”[…]
A Day to Truly Honour Women
March 8th is International Women’s Day – which I am at least glad to read they have not (yet?) modified to ‘Womxn’s’ Day – is an international disaster. Born at the dawn of the twentieth century, the day has its roots in the atheistic philosophy of Communism, which has amongst its many evil intents not just[…]
What Is Holiness?
(In light of today’s Gospel, on the calling of Levi, and our Lord eating with ‘tax collectors and sinners’, here are some fitting words on what holiness means from contributor Carl Sundell). Pope Benedict XVI knew knew the foremost item on his agenda. “First of all, I have no hesitation in saying that all pastoral[…]
The Eucharist Is the Best of the Past and the Best of the Future: A Lenten Reflection by Monsignor Foy
(This sermon by Rev. Msgr. Vincent Nicholas Foy was preached at the evening Mass a week before Ash Wednesday that year, on Sunday, February 12, 1956, and is perhaps more applicable today than those more traditional days of half a century ago. Monsignor Foy died on March 13, 2017, at the age of 101, after[…]
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen. (Saint Thomas Aquinas, +1274)
Eliot’s Ash Wednesday
T.S. Eliot published his poem Ash Wednesday in 1930, after he had composed during his conversion to Anglicanism (in 1927). The theme is, fittingly, the soul in its journey to find God, with allusions to the world, the flesh, the devil, and, on the other side, Christ, Our Lady and Dante’s Purgatorio. An excerpt, which[…]
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris – Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.
Reaping the Rotten Fruits of Relativism
Our nation is in great turmoil; and those who should provide us with moral leadership are either completely silent or dithering as they assess the political landscape in the hope of making most of any crisis for partisan gains. They are not public servants; rather, they act or fail to act, in the interests of[…]