Every year right after Christmas, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. There is an important reason for this. It’s easy to think the “incarnation” means God took on a human body, that he appeared in human flesh. But there is much more to it than that. In Jesus, God unites himself entirely with […]
Having spent most of my life as an atheist (I converted just 13 years ago), I have a good basis of comparison for the difference between Catholic and non-Catholic life. And without a doubt, these seven things are WAY better now that I’m Catholic! Reprinted with permission from CatholicSistas.com. 1. WEEKENDS My husband and I spent three […]
“The Word became flesh” (John 1.14) is a central tenet of Christian truth. It’s what Christmas is about ? not some little fat man in a red suit. Jesus is the Word that became flesh. The Incarnation: God made man. It is a unique and singular historical event so significant that the universe rejoiced. Saint […]
“Mystery,” he sneered. “That’s a good Catholic word.” My friend was a fundamentalist who had more than a bit of antipathy towards the Catholic Church, charging that it added to the simple faith of the Bible. But he didn’t read his bible very well. The word “mystery” is a Catholic word, only because it is […]
Farmers pause in their fields at midday and bow their heads in prayer. [i] Businessmen and women overhear the ringing bells during their lunch break in the downtown business district. And neighbors to Catholic Churches may hear the church bells toll at six, noon, and six as an invitation to pray the traditional devotion of […]
Sometimes I think we traditionalists get far to caught up in the details of this or that crisis in the Church today that we forget why we are fighting. We become very much like the dystopians of the Old Testament. We aren’t fighting to restore some golden age. We are fighting to reach the golden age promised to the faithful in Heaven. If we can use the things of this world and this present age to reach that point, then even better.
In a previous article, I outlined my belief that one of the greatest dangers facing Catholicism today is a lack of belief in the doctrine of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. This lack of belief stems from failing to appreciate the wide-ranging conclusions from such an event. I pointed out how this problem has led […]
“But this I have against you, that you have forgotten your first love.” (Apocalypse 2:3) When it is asked what the biggest problem in the Church is, people respond in a variety of ways. Various Catholics cite the loss of the sense of sin, loss of the dignity of the human person, the dictatorship of […]
If properly understood, the Christmas holiday would be enough, not only to end abortion, but to destroy all sin. Even sentimental secularists wince when they connect the feast of Jesus as a Baby with the millions of discarded unborn. As resourceful people, they change the subject or take shelter in a quick mental hiding place […]
The problem many of us have with Christmas isn’t that we expect too much of it but that we expect much too little. My Christmas wish for all of us, myself included, is that we raise our sights and ask for all that God really wants to give us. If we can open ourselves to […]
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). “O Lord God, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness, and Your mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can […]
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). Perhaps the most stunning revelation of Christianity is the deep humility of God. In Jesus of […]
What has heaven to do with earth? Does the Divine One care about the comings and goings of men? After all, He is “the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome” (Deuteronomy 10:17). Even Solomon wondered whether or not the Creator really deigns to walk among His creatures: […]
Imagine the crushing judicial power of a modern nation coming down upon you, trying you, sentencing you, and then planning your execution – all while the charges against you remain secret. You might recall that as the plot of Franz Kafka’s paranoiac novel, The Trial, the protagonist of which is a 30-year-old bank clerk. Under […]
