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
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God,[…]
Saint Anthony (+356) is commonly called ‘the Abbot’, or Anthony ‘of Egypt’, where he retreated to the wilderness as a young man to live completely devoted to God and His Christ. His eponym as the ‘Abbot’ was given to him as the founder of that perfect and narrow living out of the imitation of Christ[…]
Saint Paul of Thebes (+ 341) – whom we celebrate either on January 10th or, today, on the 15th – is traditionally considered the first hermit in the Catholic Church, if we don’t include John the Baptist, who is a liminal figure between the two Testaments. But there is a similarity, for as a young[…]
On this 13th day of January, in bleak midwinter, we celebrate two saints. The first, in the public calendar, is the great Saint Hilary (+367), Bishop of Poitiers, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius IX in 1851 for his clear and incisive writings against the pernicious heresy of Arianism, which denied the[…]
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 10 October 2007 Saint Hilary of Poitiers Dear Brothers and Sisters, Today, I would like to talk about a great Father of the Church of the West, St Hilary of Poitiers, one of the important Episcopal figures of the fourth century. In the controversy with the Arians,[…]
On this January 12th here in Canada we celebrate Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700), founder of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, alongside the first official ‘school’ in what were the the untamed wilds of Canada. A missionary from France in the mid-seventeenth century, she faced innumerable difficulties in her first years in the nascent Quebec City –[…]
The memorial of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, even if not in the universal calendar, is on this January 10th. Gregory is one of the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’, along with his elder brother, Saint Basil the Great, and their companion, Saint Gregory of Nazianzen – the latter two we celebrate on, January 2nd. Gregory is a highly[…]
Today, January 8th, is the feast of Saint Raymond of Penyafort (1175-1275), one of the first Dominicans (officially known as the Order of Preachers) eventually becoming the third Master General of the Order (after Saint Dominic himself, and Jordan of Saxony), and a fellow Dominican with his even-more famous confrere, Thomas Aquinas, with whom he[…]
On January 7th here in Canada we honour one of our most beloved homegrown saints, André Bessette (1845-1937), a humble lay-brother who went on to found Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. A sickly boy, brought up in a difficult childhood mired in poverty in rural Quebec, his lumberjack father was killed by a falling tree,[…]
Today is the feast of Saint John Neumann – whom we should distinguish from Saint John Henry Newman, the English Oratorian and fellow saint; as well as from the non-ordained layman John von Neumann, the great Hungarian-American mathematician and scientist, who helped devise what we now know as the ‘computer’. Today’s John Neumann was born[…]
