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
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[…]
The Seven Founders of the Servite Order commemorate the group of merchants who in 1233 left everything to follow Christ, with a special devotion to the Virgin Mary, particularly in her own union in the Passion of her Son under the title of Our Lady of Sorrows. They each received an independent vision from Our[…]
Our Lady of Lourdes is one of the few visions of the Virgin Mary to be placed in the public Liturgical calendar of the universal Church, along with her appearances at Fatima and Guadalupe. All three have in common that the visionaries to whom Our Lady manifested herself were simple, unlettered peasants, the anawim, the[…]
Saint Scholastica (+543) was the sister – some sources say the twin – of Saint Benedict. Like her brother, she forsook everything to follow Christ, setting up a community of virgins at the foot of her brother’s monastery at Monte Cassino, where she too followed the path of orans et laborans, praying and working, which[…]
A woman in Canada was recently euthanized against her will, making a macabre mockery of the ‘free choice’ aspect of this evil. God rest her soul, but she is the canary in the proverbial coal mine, a ‘hard’ case that will make the future ‘cases’ all the easier. After heart surgery, the woman was ailing,[…]
On this day in 1947, February 8th, Sister Josephine Bakhita completed the long and eventful journey of her life. Born around 1869 – she was never quite sure the precise date or year – her childhood was spent happy and fulfilled growing up in the region of Darfur, Sudan, which was not then the dystopic[…]
Today is the feast of Saint Paul Miki and Companion martyrs, put to death by crucifixion and impaling on February 5, 1597 at Nagasaki, Japan, amongst the hundreds, if not thousands, who witnessed for the Faith in those tumultuous missionary times; their example offers a healthy antidote to the rather darker and, to be quite[…]
Saint Agatha (+251) is counted amongst the most venerated of the ‘virgin martyrs’, one of the seven women whose name appears in the Canon of the Mass. Having made a vow of virginity, Agatha, under the reign of Emperor Decius, was condemned as a Christian by a certain pagan suitor, Quintianus, whom she rebuffed –[…]
Saint Blaise, a bishop of ancient Sebastea (now in Turkey), was also a physician, like Saint Luke, a healer of body and soul. And, we may add, a martyr, tortured to death for the faith in 316 A.D., a scant three years after Constantine declared the faith legally sanctioned in Roman law by the Edict[…]
Saint Bridget of Kildare (451 – 525), who lived a century after Saint Patrick (385 – 461), and a century before Saint Columbanus (543 – 615) shares with them the triumvirate patronage of Ireland. A generation younger than Saint Benedict (480 – 547) Bridget flourished during the early days of formal monasticism, the female version[…]
