“Think of the Lord with uprightness, and seek him with sincerity of heart” (Wis 1:1).
The greatest desire of every human being is to be joyful and happy. None of us wants to be wronged, or to suffer from addiction, or to be prey to despair; yet how many people live their life as though it were an intolerable burden. In fact, it is the rare person that radiates joy and happiness. From this we can conclude that happiness does not come spontaneously, without effort. Only those who understand the nature of happiness and know how to attain it ever do attain it
The Young Composer Hermann Cohen was a German Jew, an outstanding concert pianist, a convert to the Catholic faith, and a Discalced Carmelite monk. He was born in November, 1820, in Hamburg, into the family of a wealthy banker.
Does the instant of death mark the total extinction of a human being or only a transition into a new, never-ending dimension of existence? By refusing to ponder the question of our certain death we deprive our life of authenticity and cloak it in a mantle of hypocrisy. We must open ourselves up to the mystery of man and seek out the hidden presence of Jesus Christ, who embodies the only answer to the riddle of our suffering and death.
There was a time when I didn’t fully appreciate the value of Holy Mass, the Sacrament of Confession, and the grace of belonging to Jesus.
The final 24 hours of the earthly life of Jesus mark the most important event in the history of the world. Too many of us have grown hardened and insensitive to the gospel accounts of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.
The Last Supper scene as portrayed in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ underscores the singularly important fact that, before offering Himself up as a victim on Golgotha, Jesus left us “a means of sharing in [the sacrifice] as if we had been present there. Each member of the faithful can thus take part in it and profit from its inexhaustible fruits. This belief has sustained generations of Christians down the ages.” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 11)
There was a time when I didn’t fully appreciate the value of Holy Mass, the Sacrament of Confession, and the grace of belonging to Jesus.
There is a great power that flows from frequent reception of Jesus in the Eucharist. I have found that, whenever I have problems in life, the very Jesus whom I receive in Holy Communion comes to my aid. You have to discover, trust, believe and understand that the Host embraces the Upper Room, Calvary, the Cross, the Empty Tomb, and the Ascension. In it you truly encounter God.
What the three little shepherds of Fatima saw and heard during the third apparition of July 13, 1917 is known as the “Fatima secret”. The children did not wish to disclose its contents. Only under the urging of her Bishop, did Sister Lucia finally agree to set down the entire vision and the contents of the message.
