Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
The Church has had martyrs since her earliest days, and will have them unto the end of time. A number of prophecies attest that the number of martyrs towards the end will exceed those of all other centuries, and our times attest to that. But today, we look way back in time, to one of[…]
See yourself as tempted in him, and see yourself as victorious in him. He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation. (Saint Augustine, +430)
After Jesus was baptized, the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan (Mk. 1:12). On Ash Wednesday we began the observance of the holy season of Lent with the imposition of blessed ashes, an external sign of our interior resolve to undertake Lenten penance; so[…]
The Chair of Saint Peter, is a comforting one, a symbol of the ‘pillar and bulwark’ of the truth, which is the Church, signifying by synecdoche the office of the papacy, instituted by Christ, as recounted in today’s Gospel from the sixteenth chapter of Saint Matthew: Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son[…]
EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS HOMILY OF JOHN PAUL II Thursday, 22 February 2001 Feast of Saint Peter’s Chair 1. “‘Who do you say that I am?’. Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’” (Mt 16: 15-16). This conversation between Christ and his disciples, which we have just heard again, is always[…]
Things are, shall we say, fractious in the Church, when an Irish priest likens receiving Communion on the tongue to ‘feeding animals’, while the bishop of Charlotte forbids altar rails and discourages kneeling. Latin and chant are almost non-existent outside a few refuges. Liturgical aberrations, if not abuses, great and small, abound. Yet what is[…]
Not many in the hierarchy write like Saint Peter Damian (+1072) anymore, whose direct and blunt condemnation of the unnatural sexual sins of the clergy he condemns in his vivid Book of Gomorrah, as told in summary form by Carl Sundell. Then again, not many today in the hierarchy write like Pope Benedict XVI, who,[…]
On this day in 1920, February 20th, nine-year old Jacinta Marto died after great suffering, as she lay alone in a hospital bed. She had endured for weeks, including a vain attempt to alleviate her symptoms by removing two of her ribs, without proper anesthetic. The same illness had claimed her ten-year old brother, Francisco,[…]
Dear friends, what the Christian should be doing at all times should be done now with greater care and devotion, so that the Lenten fast enjoined by the apostles may be fulfilled, not simply by abstinence from food but above all by the renunciation of sin. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, +461)
Nothing is more doomed to failure than a layperson trying to tell the clergy what they ought to do. Well, perhaps if such a person held several academic degrees in Theology or Mariology, or bore visible stigmata, they might garner a moment’s interest. Otherwise, in the best-case scenario, they are destined to hear those all-too-familiar[…]
