Our personal Advents may come to us through pain, joy and longing, because all three give us reason to say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’...
We think of Advent as the run-up to celebrating the birth of our Savior and looking forward to his return. It’s a season of preparation that when finished, is finished till next year. That’s the liturgical Advent, though. Part of our communal life as Catholics and therefore regularized, even “routinized” as the sociologists put it, put into the schedule and set up with rites and readings. And given up when it’s done what it needed to do. That communal life as Catholics points us to the End and trains us for it all year round.
Bishop Robert Barron to give 2023 commencement address at Hillsdale College...
Who was Isaiah, and what does his message mean for us?
During Advent, we read quite a bit from the Prophet Isaiah. Therefore, for my own meditation and yours, I offer the following reflection on Isaiah, the man and his message. Each of the issues with which he dealt is still with us, even though we live in a far more secular world than he could have imagined. Let’s consider key elements of his life, his struggle, and his message.
Conservatives have a women problem, and it’s not going to go away on its own...
There has been a lot of chatter since the midterms about how women voted, breaking significantly toward the Democratic Party. Although the issue isn’t new, it has become the elephant in the electoral room. Conservatives can tackle it by understanding the roots that buttress women’s votes instead of hoping it will go away on its own. Much of what informs women’s votes is feminism, which has been an earnest effort by millions for over two centuries now to help improve the lives of women. What most of feminism’s adherents have missed is that the first feminists...
Murder of Louisiana Priest and Assistant Confirmed, Believed to Be Random Attack...
The Vatican is buzzing with conspiracy theories as hackers take down the Pope’s website...
This Christmas, introduce your family to Servant of God Julia Greeley (and be prepared for miracles)...
By all odds, the life of Julia Greeley should have been lost to history. Born into slavery in the 1840s, she came into the world with no last name and few prospects, and by all accounts, was poor all her life. Yet today she qualifies as a true heroic figure — the kind of real-life hero that parents would be eager to introduce to their kids. Now, the accomplished essayist and writer of children’s books, Maura Roan McKeegan, has done just that...
There isn’t anything else quite like it. Marriage stands out in all of creation...
It is the very archetype of the astounding reality called ‘complementarity’: where two are different for the sake of one shared good. A common good. Sometimes, even often, it can feel as though something is simply wrong: Why are the differences between man and woman—and the reasons and implications of the differences—so hard to discern? Why are they so hard to live out? Why do they seem to be unfair, at least sometimes? Isn’t the difference between man and woman commonly the very thing that breaks rather than makes a marriage?
Why Émile Zola was so frightened of Our Lady of Lourdes...
I’m not a fan of Émile Zola (1840–1902), the French novelist who is famous for his dissembling, unrestrained animus toward the Catholic Church. He was a contemporary of St. Bernadette of Lourdes and he had many opportunities to speak the truth and honestly report on what he witnessed at Lourdes — but instead, he took the cowardly way out. On Dec. 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in his bull...
Senate Passes ‘Same-Sex Marriage’ Bill, Sending it Back to the House...
Confession and the Art of Boiler Maintenance...
Jesus alone redeems and saves through the Cross and Resurrection, mediated by Church teaching through the Ten Commandments and the Sacraments. A Catholic church should be an oasis of orthodoxy, fidelity, and sanity. People should fill every Catholic pew, yet inactive Catholics as a group outnumber large Protestant denominations. So let’s make this appeal to our young people: teenagers and young adults. Do you realize how good you have it?
St. John the Baptist is very much the voice of conscience. He even looks and sounds like a conscience might...
The voice of one crying in the desert in the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year A is the voice of your conscience. What does the voice want? Whatever change it takes in your case to make a straight path for the Lord to enter your life this Christmas. John the Baptist is very much the voice of conscience. He even looks and sounds like a conscience might. He lives on the bare necessities...
Church and state in Ukraine, ‘un-baptisms’ in Belgium, and bread in France...
Our top stories this week both come from Ukraine via our correspondent, Anatolii Babynskyi. Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a coming major crackdown on the operation of Moscow-affiliated Orthodox churches in the country. For weeks, Ukrainian intelligence services have been staging raids on monasteries, rectories, and chanceries belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP). The government claims to have found reams of Russian propaganda material promoting the Russkiy-mir worldview of Vladimir Putin and denying the right of Ukraine to exist as an independent nation.
Everything is (not) broken...
Every so often an article appears that demands to be shared. So I’m doing that here. If you do nothing else in the coming week, read N.S. Lyons’s recent essay on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and technocracy at his Substack site, The Upheaval. It’s worth every minute of your time. And note that the name “Lyons” is a pseudonym. In real life, the author is an analyst working in the U.S. foreign policy community. The Upheaval is not a religious site; it covers a wide range of global topics. But Lyons’s skills go well beyond the mechanics of foreign policy.
Thy will be done, but why?
There is a solemn anticipation, a stillness of the day and night where all humanity if they so choose, await the coming of a Savior. Our human attitude begins its preparation to embrace a Divine attitude, which proposes to bring sanctification and salvation through the birth of the Incarnate Word. For the Divine attitude to take form, we are called to enter a story that introduces us to our origin as created human beings in the image and likeness of God.
Unforgiveness is serving time for someone else’s crime...
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that prisoner was you. While true forgiveness is a process and a decision, there are many things forgiveness is not. We’ll learn how to keep your boundaries while forgiving someone who isn’t sorry. As you make room in your heart and mind for Jesus this Advent, enjoy this 4-week video series and small group guide...
Recognize the advantages you may have (and the compassion that should follow)...
Your new life in Christ means divinization, and your final goal is to love as God loves...
“We have been placed on earth to learn to love in the school of Jesus,” writes Fr. Jacques Philippe in Interior Freedom. “Learning to love is extremely simple: it means learning to give freely and receive freely. But this simple lesson also is very hard for us to learn, because of sin.” In that short paragraph, Philippe sums up my entire Catholic testimony. I’d grown up in faith, but I lost my way in college. I wanted Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels, but I couldn’t find him. An abstract Jesus of the written Word and interior experience wasn’t enough. I wanted to see him, touch him, know him.
5 Takeaways From Pope Francis’ Latest Interview...
“Polarization is not Catholic,” the Holy Father said in response to a question about divisive politics. “A Catholic cannot think either-or (aut-aut) and reduce everything to polarization. The essence of what is Catholic is both-and (et-et). The Catholic unites the good and the not-so-good. There is only one people of God. When there is polarization, a divisive mentality arises, which privileges some and leaves others behind. The Catholic always harmonizes differences.”
Vatican Website Taken Down by Suspected Hacker Attack...
Mysterious ‘large object’ detected near Titanic wreck finally identified...
Father Otis Young identified as one of the victims of brutal double homicide in Louisiana...
The Vatican, China, and the ‘spirit of dialogue’...
Thai Buddhist temple emptied after all the monks test positive for meth...
Becciu Meets With Pope Francis to ‘Clarify’ Secret Recording Amid Mounting Scandals...
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