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
John Ogilvie was born in 1579, just as the Protestant ‘reformation’ was taking hold in Britain, including his native land of Scotland, led by the fiery apostate priest John Knox. Catholicism would soon be all-but wiped out in dear Alba, signified by the death of our saint. Although raised in his first formative years by[…]
We should not be surprised that the saints speak to us through the ages. How they responded in their own era with its own troubles and crises offers us an example for how to act in our own. As well, they intercede for us, that we, like them, may fulfill God’s holy and perfect will.[…]
Saints are by definition ‘extreme’, for they live a liminal life, on the very threshold of eternity, seeing past the veil of this world. Hence, they act as though all that mattered were the next life, which, in the end, is true. Contrary to John Lennon, they more than imagine – they fully believe, and[…]
Today marks the memorial of the early martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, put to death likely in the year 203, under the reign of Septimius Severus, an emperor who seems on the whole to have been well-disposed to Christians. But the true religion was still one hundred and ten years away from being legally recognized by[…]
(Today’s saint, one of the patrons of Poland, and of Lithuania, whose very name means ‘bearer of peace’, makes a very a propos intercessor for our troubled world. May peace prevail.) Ed. Saint Casimir died young – as the good often do – entering eternity on this day, March 4th, 1484, at the tender age[…]
Mother Katharine Mary Drexel (1858 – 1955) is a fitting intercessor for the racial tensions afflicting her native United States. For one thing, she is the first natural born canonized American citizen (Elizabeth Ann Seton was born in 1774, in what would become that nation a few years later). A young debutante who inherited her[…]
A brief note on Saint David, the sixth-century monastic bishop, now patron, of Wales, born at an unknown date, but who likely died on this day, March 1st, in 589, based on what evidence we have. He was acclaimed bishop after an eloquent sermon he gave, denouncing the lingering heresy of Pelagianism – that we[…]
The Armenian monk Gregory Narek (Grigor Narekatsi), whose life spanned the latter half of the 11th century (ca. 950 – 1003), was enrolled amongst the elite Doctors of the Church by Pope Francis in 2015, and soon afterwards placed in the universal liturgical calendar. His life was externally uneventful, at least in a worldly sense.[…]
Gabriel of the Seven Sorrows, who died on this day in 1862, may be seen as a kind of male Saint Thérèse, but, as in all things male and female, they were also quite different; Both were difficult, willful children, but managed, by the grace of God, to bend those wills to God’s will. Like[…]
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[…]
