Interior Peace & Sadness
“Always active, always at rest.” -St. Augustine Be on your guard lest your zeal degenerate into anxiety and eagerness. Saint Francis de Sales was a most pronounced enemy of these two defects. They cause us to lose sight of God in our actions and make us very prone to impatience if the slightest obstacle should…
To Attain Perfection We Must Endure Our Imperfection
The feast of the Purification has no octave; it should continue our whole life. We must have our mind settled on two points; one, to expect the growth of weeds in our garden; the other, to have courage to witness their removal, and to lend a hand ourselves. For self-love will not die as long…
Metanoia and the Spiritual Experience of Pilgrimage: Part I
Climbing Croagh Patrick in Ireland before dawn. Attending Midnight Mass in Bethlehem under the stars. Standing in the arena under the Mediterranean sun where the martyrs perished in Carthage. Fortunate is the Catholic who can experience pilgrimage, embarking on an extraordinary journey of faith and the personal transformation that comes from penitence and conversion, a…
Spiritual Realities of the Papacy & the Priesthood
When two of her sons told her they were being called by God to the priesthood my Grandma Schmidt went back to work at nights as a licensed nurse to help pay for their seminary formation. My Uncles Carl and Anthony were ordained priests on the same day in 1950. When asked who, out of…
Saint Monica: Christian Woman Married to a Pagan
Although there were many Christians in Roman Africa, pagan manners and customs still survived in many of her cities. The people clung to their games in the circus, the cruel and bloody combats of the arena, which, though forbidden by Constantine, were still winked at by provincial governors. They scarcely pretended to believe in their…
Freedom as a Divine Gift and Duty
Freedom is indisputably one of the paradigmatic and quintessential values of our Western culture, so much so that we may be led to conclude that it is a value which springs out of our human nature itself. To a certain extent, this is true. But if we examine the history of humanity in its broadest…
The School of Calvary & the Necessity of the Cross
Stop. Be still. Calm the mind for a moment; allow the striking, jarring, chilling words of the God-man to sink deeply into your soul: “And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38). “And calling the multitude together with his disciplines, he said to them: If…
Zeal for Souls
To love Jesus Christ is to love the souls redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ. We can, then, judge of Gerard’s zeal for the salvation of souls by the seraphic ardor that consumed him for our Divine Saviour. In his resolutions, we read the following beautiful words: “O my God, may I convert as…
