Familiar Friendship with Jesus
Thanksgiving Meditation: Gratitude to Jesus Christ
Inequality in Friendship
Reflection on the Feast of St. Cecilia
Confession is the Sacrament of Mercy (PART II)
Discourse on the Presentation of Mary
The offering that Mary made of herself to God was prompt without delay, and entire without reserve There never was, and never will be, an offering on the part of a pure creature greater or more perfect than that which Mary made to God when, at the age of three years, she presented herself in…
Confession is the Sacrament of Mercy (PART I)
“I said: I will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord, and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin.” -Ps. 31:5 The sacrament of penance is a sacrament of mercy. We should therefore approach it with confidence and in peace. Saint Francis de Sales assures us that for those who go to confession…
Virtues of St. Gerard Majella
His Desire for the Highest Perfection After the death of Father Cafaro, his first director, Gerard placed himself under the direction of Father Juvenal, a religious of great virtue. To him we are indebted for precious documents on the holy brother’s inner life. He soon saw for himself that Gerard had received from God the…
Spiritual Desolation
We ought to view in the light of God’s holy will, the loss of persons who are helpful to us in a spiritual or material way. Pious souls often fail in this respect by not being resigned to the dispositions of God’s holy will. Our sanctification comes fundamentally and essentially from God, not from spiritual…
Prayers Suitable to the Sick
The bed of the sick is an altar of sacrifice…Happy is the just man who disturbs not the sacrifice by his murmurs and his cries, who adores the beneficent hand that is hidden under the instruments which it vouchsafes to employ, who blesses the salutary strokes, who feels the honor of the distinction! How brilliant…
Is the Brown Scapular “Biblical”?
On its face, the question sounds ridiculous. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel knows that the small, woolen sacramental goes back to Carmelite St. Simon Stock’s vision of 1251 A.D. The earliest account, in the Carmelite Sanctoral, recorded how the Blessed Mother showed St. Simon the Scapular…
How to Make Mary Live and Reign in Our Souls
Predestinate soul, have you understood, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, what I have tried to explain to you in the preceding pages? If so, be thankful to God, for it is a secret known and understood by only a few. If you have found the treasure hidden in the field of Mary, the…
Prayer Secures God’s Blessings on Our Labors
Without exaggeration we can say: Whatsoever is truly great in this world is a fruit of prayer. Every man who has achieved something extraordinary in the Church has been a man of prayer. For this reason the beneficent influence of the contemplative orders in the Church is incalculable. The unthinking world calls such religious idlers,…
