This will be a time of judgment and purification for the Church. I firmly believe that good will come of it—although the Church will suffer severe scars for decades. I have no doubt that the sexual abuse crisis will drive countless Catholics from the Church and prevent countless other people from entering into full communion with her. That in itself is cause for great sorrow.
Main Content
Recent
To Whom Shall We Go?
My heart is breaking. Only five minutes ago our son—our number three—rolled out of the driveway, bound for seminary. As moms, our hearts break over and over again throughout the years. It doesn’t help at all that he is entering seminary at one of the worst possible times in the history of the Catholic Church in America.
Loving as God Loves, Marriage and Fulfillment
What would life be without love? Think about the best love stories that inspired you growing up, important role models in your life, great love stories from Disney characters or perhaps the lifelong love and fidelity of a married couple you know. Love is the fabric of life: a divine gift that directs, heals, and ennobles our life-journey toward heavenly fulfillment.
The Assumption: The Virgin Mary goes before us in the Order of Grace
Let us this day renew our love for the Virgin Mary, who proceeds us in the order of grace, and who has travelled the path of life before her children in the Church. . . .
More Stuff
St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Theological Virtue of Hope
Christ crucified beckons us to see in hope the “now” and beyond it into eternity. In doing so, aided by the Spirit and thus empowered to live in a new, even astonishing, recreated and transformed way, we join our voices confidently and with conviction to St. Maximilian Kolbe’s: “I wish to die for that man.”
“Blessed are the Pure in Heart: They Shall See God” (Mt. 5:8)
How important is cultivating purity of heart for experiencing the presence of God? It is an endeavor of a crucial nature that culminates in an embrace of Divine Love beyond expression. “The day on which God has unrestricted power over our hearts we shall also have unrestricted power over his”—St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like a Net Thrown Into The Sea
Instituted by Christ and founded on the apostles, the Church on earth is the kingdom of heaven in its seed and beginning. The Church is God the Father’s intended home for all people, deigned to be so from before time began. She is inclusive, barring no person from communion with her and her founder, Jesus Christ. It is only the individual who voluntarily excludes himself by rejecting communion with the Church through free-choices that are incompatible with the love of Christ and the rule of his kingdom.
Jesus’ Teaching Parables: The Mustard Seed
Was Jesus wrong about mustard seeds? If we’re worried about that, we’re missing the point. Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed is not intended to make scientific horticultural statements. Rather, he used the example and imagery of mustard seeds and the bushes they produce to make a metaphorical comparison with the kingdom of heaven.