Search within your heart for what is pleasing to God. Your heart must be crushed. Are you afraid that it might perish so? You have the reply: Create a clean heart in me, O God. For a clean heart to be created, the unclean one must be crushed. (Saint Augustine, +430)
Month: July 2025
Fourteenth Sunday: Ite Missa Est!
See I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves (Lk. 10:3). ⧾ The commission of the seventy disciples to go and to prepare for Our Lord’s own coming is a commission that continues through the ages. We too are likewise sent by virtue of our Confirmation; and at the end of[…]
Message of John Paul II to the Bishop of Albano for the Centenary of the Death of St. Maria Goretti
To my Venerable Brother Bishop Agostino Vallini of Albano 1. A hundred years ago, on 6 July 1902, Maria Goretti died in the hospital at Nettuno, brutally stabbed the day before in the little village of Le Ferriere, in the Pontine Marshes. Her spiritual life, the strength of her faith, her ability to forgive her[…]
Maria Goretti, A Martyr for Chastity
It was a day much like today, a hot, humid and sweltering July 6th in the year of our Lord 1902, one hundred and twenty three years ago, in a small farming town in the fetid area outside of Rome, when a young girl – one could scarcely call her a woman, at twelve years[…]
Saint Anthony Zaccaria
Saint Anthony Zaccaria (+1539), from noble lineage in late-renaissance Italy, was born in Rome in 1502, on the cusp of the Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church. But the mayhem at this point was mostly in far-off northern Europe, and did not impact Anthony’s life at first. He studied medicine, practising for three years, after which[…]
The Fourth of July: Pier Giorgio and Elizabeth of Portugal
A joyous Independence Day to all our American readers. There are any number of factions developing in the once-United States, but all can be traced back to those who accept the Christian principles that hold the republic together – in God we trust – from those who have rejected them, and are more or less[…]
Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. (John 20:29)
Pope Benedict and Saint Thomas the Apostle
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 27 September 2006 Thomas the twin Dear Brothers and Sisters, Continuing our encounters with the Twelve Apostles chosen directly by Jesus, today we will focus our attention on Thomas. Ever present in the four lists compiled by the New Testament, in the first three Gospels he is[…]
Thomas, Apostle – Believing without Seeing
Saint Thomas, the Apostle, is called ‘Didymus’, the ‘twin’, perhaps, as some surmised, because he looked a lot like Christ. Whether that be true, he’s not like the Saviour in also being called ‘the Doubter’, for, missing on that ‘first day of the week’, he did not believe the other Apostles when they claimed that[…]
Two Praetorians and a Jesuit
Saints Processus and Martinian (+67) were Praetorian Guards – the elite of the Roman legionaries – who were tasked with keeping watch over Saints Peter and Paul in prison. When the Apostles’ prayers caused a miraculous spring to flow, the guards were converted and baptized. Since Christianity was proscribed during the reign of Nero –[…]