Part I: “Seeing Holy Mass with Benedictine Eyes“ Part II: “Seeing Holy Mass with Carmelite Eyes“ The Dominicans are the towering “lights” of the Church. Think about it: Saint Albert the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Catherine of Siena, among others, were all Dominicans. The intellectual wattage and spiritual luminosity hardly gets brighter than…
Above: depiction of Our Lady giving the brown scapular to the Carmelite Ss. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux from the church of Santa Maria della Victoria in Rome. Photo by Fr. Lawrence, OP. Read part I of this series “Seeing Holy Mass with Benedictine Eyes“ One of the most…
Our Lord in His generosity has given the Church many wonderful “schools of spirituality” nurtured within the great religious orders. While ultimately all of these schools are in harmony with each other (otherwise they could not be considered Catholic!), each one approaches the spiritual life, the virtues, the practice of the Faith, devotions, apostolate, etc.,…
Above: The Assumption of Mary by Luca Giordano (1634-1705). “Today the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven; rejoice, for she reigns with Christ forever.” The Church will close her chants on this glorious day with this sweet antiphon which resumes the object of the feast and the spirit in which it should be celebrated. No other…
A concise and profound manual of spiritual life, without rhetoric and without compromise: an antidote to modern, nebulous and sentimental pseudo-spirituality. This is Lived Christianity, the magnificent text by Dom François de Sales Pollien, just published by Calx Mariae Publishing in the first English edition (London: 2022). Joseph Pollien was born on 1 August 1853…
The season of summer is often seen as the best of the four seasons for people of the Northern hemisphere. This time of the year also coincides with one of the greatest feasts of the Church, notably Pentecost. The Church has tied the two events together through the Pentecost Ember Days, which is ordered towards…
Our Divine Lord, hanging on the Cross in the sight of the assembled multitudes, insulted, scorned, and blasphemed by His enemies, turns to His Eternal Father, and beseeches Him to forgive them, for they know not what they do. Consider — 1. The charity with which Jesus prays. After a prolonged period of silence, our…
Painting: Christ Crucified (1632) by Diego Velázquez. Pauline mortification part one, part two/three. A fourth reason obliging us to mortification or abnegation is the necessity of imitating Jesus crucified. He Himself tells us: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily” (Lk. 9:23). St. Paul adds: For…
The following talk was given at a Call to Holiness event at Assumption Grotto in Detroit on Sunday, March 6, 2022. Please note that the sound quality in the video improves at the 2’15” mark, at which time the lapel mic begins working. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, at an…
The doctrine of the Gospel on the necessity of mortification is explained at considerable length by St. Paul in his epistles. Frequent quotation is made of his words: “I chastise my body and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway” (I Cor. 9:27). Likewise…
With a majority of German bishops now on record as voting for official permission for contraception and the legitimization of sodomy, it seems time to reexamine the irreconcilable contrast between two views of reality. The Church in her traditional Roman Rite frequently prays that we may receive the grace to “despise” (or, as Lauren Pristas…
