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
(A reprise of an article I published last year on this memorial of the great Saint Joseph…) Saint Joseph has two ‘feast’ days in the universal Church, neither of which is technically a ‘feast’. The first, on March 19th, is his principal day, celebrated as a full solemnity, usually in Lent (unless bumped into Easter[…]
Saint Anselm (+1109) was bishop of the see of Canterbury, back when it was still Catholic, and remained officially so until the predations of the Tudors, the descendants of Henry VIII. Yet, Anselm had his own struggles with the Kings of his earlier age, William Rufus and Henry I, who wanted to control the Church,[…]
Bd. Marie-Anne Blondin (+1890), whose feast was just the other day, and of whom you may never have heard, founded a religious congregation of Sisters to teach young people in Quebec, most of whom were illiterate (the children, not the Sisters); apparently, there was a local Church law that forbade students being taught by members[…]
April 12th marked the anniversary of the death of Saint Joseph Moscati, an Italian physician, who dedicated his life to helping the sick and the poor, often giving them money along with their prescriptions, taking a vow of chastity so he could focus on this apostolate, helping countless patients, and was one of the first to[…]
So, what of hell? As you may have heard, and on which I wrote a few days ago, Pope Francis has allegedly (through the perhaps hazy recollection of Eugenio Scalfari after an untranscribed interview) denied that souls spend an eternity in ‘hell’, but are rather annihilated, cast into oblivion and cease to exist. We know[…]
We are now on the seventh day of the Easter Octave, eight days that are one long, glorious day, so this Friday is treated as a full solemnity, a Sunday, a day to rejoice and sing for joy, so once again, a blessed and joyous Easter to all our readers! The reason for elation is[…]
Last week, a fire broke out in a mall, located in Kemerovo, a remote city in Siberia, on a day that happened to be the beginning of family holiday time, killing 64 people. The mall, replete with a bowling alley, trampoline, movie theatres, was filled with children, who comprised a majority of the victims, perishing[…]
Today is Pi Day, the third month and 14th day, signifying of course 3.14, the first digits in the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Pi has now been calculated to 22 trillion digits, by a computer, of course, although Chao Lu pi to 67,890 decimal places, which took him 24 hours and[…]
Saint John of God, whose baptismal name was João Duarte Cidade, lived an incredible life: on the streets alone soon after the tender age of eight, followed by the life of soldier and wanderer, through Europe, the Middle East, Spain, eventually ending upon amongst the poorest of the poor, apparently vocation-less at 42, when God[…]
Saint Thomas Aquinas died on this day, March 7, 1274, at the Cistercian monastery of Fossanuova in Italy, between Naples and Rome (where there is now a street named after him) on his way to the Second Council of Lyons, in southwestern France. His death, like his life, was eminently holy and simple, offering his[…]
