The Feast of Corpus Christi — of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ — finds its origins in the 13th century. It came about almost entirely through the persistence of St. Juliana, a nun from the town of Liège in Belgium. Orphaned at the age of five, she was placed with the convent…
“Behold the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth: and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” – James 5:4 It would be difficult to argue that there has ever in history been a greater…
The following is a translation (from the original French) of His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s homily on the Feast of Pentecost at Chartres, offered for those who were attending the annual pilgrimage there. This is an excellent sermon. It’s inspiring. As always, it’s clear that the good Bishop Schneider sees the gathering threat, and is prepared to instruct…
Those old sayings stay with us for good reason. Our bones absorb them in childhood; we can never outgrow them. Later, as adults, we find ourselves forever surprised by the truth of them. No small part of our initial moral education is owed to Aesop. His bestiary brought warnings against all kinds of vanity, thick-headed…
Pope Francis’ appointment of Fr. Timothy Radcliffe to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace this past weekend was most disconcerting. Any openly dissident priest who advocates for Catholic acceptance of gay relationships and identity, women’s ordination, and the “Eucharistic” nature of sodomy — a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance — should not be given…
In Acts 1:2, we witness angels speaking to the Apostles who were staring into the skies into which the Lord had just ascended: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye there gazing into heaven? This Jesus, Who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven.”…
If it’s Monday, then my son is hearing the same refrain from me: “If you keep your bedroom clean this week, you get a pack of baseball cards.” On Sunday I check his room, and if it’s clean, he gets his pack of baseball cards. If it’s not clean…then he gets a pack of baseball…
I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up other people’s messes. When I became a stay-at-home mother eleven years ago, nobody told me how much of my life would revolve around doing just that. There were tasks I expected – making meals, doing laundry and putting it away, reading to the children, even changing diapers. But the…
Want to listen to this post instead? The audio is available here: I am a member of a spiritual association which requires the recitation of certain prayers each day. And each day, one section of the prayers is substituted with another, focusing on a different aspect of the spiritual life. On Fridays, the members say…
The Pew Research Center just released its latest study on “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” The subtitle tells the story: “Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow.” For our purposes, I want to focus on the Catholic numbers. Anyone who has been paying attention, either to these studies or…
This is the third installment of a multi-part series. You may find each part here: Part I – Part II – Part III A Book of Hours was the essential guide to devotion for a literate Catholic layman of the late Middle Ages, from the late 14th century to the early 16th. Its content was essentially liturgical, but selected with…
