A sub-category of News.
We often hear or read a word or phrase or we listen to a piece of music and we absorb it immediately without thinking. As Catholics, we have filters — defenses, really — that block or at least alert us to problematic messages. But some problematic messages slip through easily. I now realize that they…
The recent spike in silver prices has been framed, predictably, as a kind of vindication. On social media, metallists celebrate while mocking cryptocurrency advocates; old debates are resurrected as though price action itself had rendered a philosophical verdict. But this framing misses the point entirely. Silver is not “winning.” Bitcoin is not “losing.” What is…
Once upon a time, Hollywood used to produce movies. Real movies, that is. They were like serious novels but on celluloid. They were movies that explored the depths of the human condition, with its soaring peaks and dreadful valleys. It was a time when formidable creativity was placed at the service of truth and beauty….
Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction. May God the Father Omnipotent, be to us merciful and clement. ℟. Amen. Reading 4 From the Sermons of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Patriarch of Constantinople. Discourse on the Epiphany, 2 I am not able to restrain the outbursts of my happiness. I feel changed and elated. I forget my…
I know a few dangerous men. One of them dons an apron monthly and makes hundreds of pancakes. Another trains adolescent boys on how to use a compass and other skills to survive in the wilderness. Yet another organizes a weekly prayer schedule for vocations. All of them, you might have guessed, are lay members…
Twenty-six years ago, Niagara Falls, New York, had 14 Roman Catholic parishes. However, due to the fact that the city loses about 1,000 citizens a year (death and a mass-migration to southern climes), as well as a sex scandal that has had a stranglehold on the Diocese of Buffalo since 2002, the number has dwindled…
Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction. May God the Father Omnipotent, be to us merciful and clement. ℟. Amen. Reading 4 From the Sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great. 5th on the Twelfth day This meet and right, dearly beloved brethren, yea, it is our bounden duty and godly service, to rejoice with full hearts…
If you were to randomly ask an average Christian, even one who does not routinely pray, pay, or obey, what is the greatest miracle of all, chances are that the answer would be, almost without exception, the Resurrection. What happened on Easter Sunday morning—the disciples, finding the tomb empty, only to see shortly thereafter the…
Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction. May God the Father Omnipotent, be to us merciful and clement. ℟. Amen. Reading 4 From the Sermons of St. Maximus, Bishop of Turin. 1st on the Epiphany. Dearly beloved brethren, we are instructed by the tradition of the Fathers, that we have to keep holiday on this solemnity in…
We are in Epiphanytide, that stretch of the liturgical year whose very name, drawn from the Greek ἐπιφάνεια, signals manifestation, disclosure, the making-visible of divine reality within human history. From the beginning, Epiphany held a privileged place in the ancient Eastern Churches, where the Feast gathered into a single luminous focus several moments in which…
