When I first became a Christian, and then a Catholic, prayer was one of those things that came with a lot of questions. How do I do it? Why should I do it? What does it do? What should I expect? And I think a lot of those questions can easily persist for people well into their spiritual journeys.
Source: The Joy of Faith via YouTube Dr. Franco Serafini has been seen in various media sources – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi-mj… The link to his book in Italian – https://www.ibs.it/cardiologo-visita-… Consider becoming a patron – https://www.thejoyofthefaith.com/beco… Header image: Eucharistic Miracle Guadalajara, Mexico via visionofchrist.com; Dr. Franco Serafini via es.aleteia.org
In order to understand why I think Catholics should, generally, avoid criticizing the Pope and why I, especially, refuse to do so publicly, is by first understanding the Church through the analogy of a family.
Friends, I encourage you to watch this clip from our “CATHOLICISM” series on St. Katharine Drexel. As a wealthy young laywoman, disturbed by the treatment of Native Americans, she traveled to Rome and had an audience with Pope Leo XIII. She begged the Holy Father to create an order of priests or nuns to teach and love the Native Americans.
Fr. Mark Goring, reading from the diary of St. Faustina, describes the seven tortures of hell, as well as the extra specific suffering a soul has to go through in hell.
Fr. Mark Goring says to stockpile food, but don’t break the bank, and buy things that you actually use. Maybe have a couple of weeks food in your store, just in case fresh produce does not become easy to purchase. Also, perhaps add some other necessities such as toiletries. He suggests that this may not be so much from the result of a second wave, but due to further government restrictions and ‘fear’.
In this ‘mini-homily’ Fr. Mark Goring recounts how St. Anthony of the Desert, struggled with trying to find the correct balance between the spiritual and temporal in his life. Tradition has it that an angel appeared to St. Anthony, and told him to ‘work a bit, pray a bit’ and that by doing this he would be saved. An insight to help us get the right balance in our own busy lives.
Our ancestors understood that men and women have distinct qualities so they tried to define roles and conventions that were best suited to the strengths of each.
So, it might be true to say that traditional gender roles are societal conventions, but what’s being left out of that is that they are conventions that are an attempt, admittedly imperfect, to reflect objective, biological, and maybe even, spiritual, realities.
The St. Paul Center is thrilled to announce a new series with Dr. Scott Hahn, brought to you in a more personal and relaxed setting, his home! Every other week, Dr. Hahn will be opening the Scriptures for us in focused ways to show us correlations between the Old and New Testaments and deepening our understanding of God’s Divine Plan for humanity throughout Salvation History.
Friends, some Catholics in America today are increasingly vocal in their attacks on the Second Vatican Council—an ecumenical council of the Church summoned and presided over by the successor of Peter. How should we understand this disturbing trend? In this keynote talk from the 2020 Napa Institute, I trace the missionary purpose of Vatican II from the conciliar texts themselves, through the New Evangelization…
Trent Horn debates a caller on Catholic Answers Live who argues that a human fetus is not a living person until it’s outside of the womb.
Wearing masks, not wearing masks, and all the mixed emotions that have come with the coronavirus reveal that—as a society—we lack freedom from the fear of death. Maybe you know someone who has died from the virus, or someone who lost their livelihood due to the lockdown. Many are wondering when they can safely go out again, or when they can they go back to Mass.