As we approach Easter, the Church switches our focus from our Lenten sacrifices to a much more important sacrifice.  It was motivated by a love stronger than death, a choice for fruitfulness over comfort and safety.  Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it remains just a grain of wheat.  For the 5th Sunday of Lent, B.

Almsgiving or works of mercy are essential to making Lenten Fasting lead to the spiritual renewal and progress that the Season of Lent is all about, says this fifth century writer.

The Feast of the Holy Family is an essential part of the Christmas Season.  It makes clear that the Incarnation means not just that the Divine Word assumed a human body, but entered into every aspect of human life, including family life sanctifying it all and making it a path to holiness.

All Saints Day, observed on November 1, gives us the opportunity to honor the multitudes of Christians who are in heaven yet are not on either the canonized saint list or the liturgical calendar.  But it also provides us the chance to reflect on just what holiness is and who is called to sanctity.

St. Francis is sometimes regarded as patron saint of the environment.  But to tell the truth, Francis love for the cosmos was something quite different than the attitude of some today who would call themselves environmentalists.

7 minute podcast describing the Dead Sea and the mysterious ruins of Qumran on its western shore where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

"Late have I loved you," read on the Feast of St. Augustine, August 28, laments a man who did not finally yield to faith and baptism till his thirties, whose enthusiasm for the created things of this world held him back from their Creator. But now, having breathed the fragrance of God's truth and beauty, he pants for God and burns for the peace that only the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ can provide.

This papal primer seeks to dispel popular misconceptions about the Papacy and explain in everyday language what scripture teaches about the role of Simon Peter and how the Catholic Church relates that to the role of the Pope

he Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus at the summit of Mt. Tabor, remembered each year on August 6, is one of the pivotal events of the Lord’s public ministry.  The veil of the carpenter’s humanity is pulled back for a moment and his divine nature is revealed.  This sudden manifestation of the divinity of Christ and anticipation of his risen glory tells us of the role of mountaintop experiences – to remind us that things are not always as they appear to be, and that we must walk by faith, not by sight.  

Bonaventure reflects on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the meaning of the blood and water flowing from the side of Christ crucified (John 19:34), the living water of sacramental grace coming from the loving heart of the Savior. He reflects especially on several lines of Psalm 36, used in the office of the feast : “Your love, Lord, reaches to heaven, your truth to the skies . . . In you is the source of life and in your light we see light.”