God reigns in every saint, and every saint obeys God’s spiritual laws — God, who dwells in him just as he dwells in any well-ordered city. The Father is present in him and in his soul Christ reigns alongside the Father, as it is said: We will come to him and make our dwelling with him. (Origen, +253)
Year: 2025
Quas Primas of Pius XI: On the Feast of Christ the King
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the institution of the Feast of Christ the King, by the promulgation of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas, on December 11th, 1925. QUAS PRIMAS ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING TO OUR VENERABLE BRETHREN THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, AND OTHER[…]
A Triptych of Saints: Clement, Columba and Pro
We commemorate three saints on this November 23rd, Saints Clement of Rome, Columba and Miguel Pro, muted this year on the Solemnity of Christ the King. These three intercessors and examples from three different eras all lived, and two gave their lives, for the truth of their God. Their joyful fidelity in the midst of[…]
Christ the King, and the Promise of Eternal Life
‘Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Lk. 23:43). From the moment that Our Lord spoke these words, the Church has lived in this present time frame. Although the chronology of time progresses and unfolds, the eternal today of God’s time reaches across and underlies all history. This today of[…]
Who is Our King?
As Moses prepared the Israelites to enter the Promised Land he prophesied that they would ask for a king, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are round about me” (Dt. 17:14). He did not condemn the desire that he knew they would have, but he did give them some[…]
The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value (pretii inaestimabilis), greater even than that of any other art. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963)
Now, who is more worthy of such a cry of jubilation than God himself, whom all words fail to describe? If words will not serve, and yet you must not remain silent, what else can you do but cry out for joy? Your heart must rejoice beyond words, soaring into an immensity of gladness, unrestrained[…]
Saint Caecilia’s Heavenly Music
We have to wait to hear what heavenly music sounds like, but Saint Francis de Sales once recounted that he was blessed to hear an angel played one note on a violin – of what material it was made we may only surmise – and said it was the most beautiful sound he could remember.[…]
Mary heard God’s word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth, he was carried in her womb insofar[…]
Our Lady’s Presentation, and the Perfect Gift of Self
The Presentation of Mary – commemorating Our Lady’s dedication and consecration to God as a young girl of about three years old in the Temple – is found in none of the four traditional Gospels, but rather related in the apocryphal ‘Gospel of James’, which dates from the beginning of the third century. However, as[…]