Author: S&P
The First Commandment
“The Lord your God will cleanse your heart…. so that you will love Him with all your heart and soul.” Deuteronomy 30:6 God greatly desires our love. It is the nature of all love to want to be acceptable and to be accepted. God longs to have the love of our whole heart. How can we love God with all our heart and soul? In the same way that we receive salvation – through faith alone...
Guilty as Charged
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” John 3:16 He had been out of prison only a few weeks when I met him. It was the result of a cold call that I made to ask him to speak at a men’s retreat I was leading. He said yes and it was the beginning of a long friendship. He was known as “The Hatchet Man” in the White House. He went from the Oval Office to standing in front of a...
Choices
Colleen Reece had a career choice to make! She’d been offered the position as personal assistant to a bank president. Definitely a step up the ladder for Colleen. And to add icing to the cake – the salary she was offered was twice what she was making as a school secretary. Colleen had given her life to the Lord many years before. And a big part of her life since, was counse...
Forgiving is Not Excusing
Forgiveness is not excusing! Nor is it pretending. To forgive is to move on, not to think about the offense anymore. You don’t excuse him, endorse her, or embrace them. You just route thoughts about them through heaven. Revenge is God’s job. By the way, how can we grace-recipients do anything less? Dare we ask God for grace when we refuse to give it? It’s a huge issue in the Bible. Jesus was tough...
Forgive All Injuries: A Meditation on the Sixth Spiritual Work of Mercy…..
Of all the things about which I preach, very few (if any) provoke as strong (and usually negative) a reaction as the call to forgive. I get more angry pushback after a Mass at which I preach on forgiveness than when I speak about chastity, greed, or any other challenging moral topic. It would seem that the anger is rooted in two things: first, that the call to forgive...
‘The Incorruptibles’: Who Are These Mysterious Saints?
“You are dust,” says Genesis 3:19, “and to dust you shall return.” Every Ash Wednesday, we hear this scriptural reminder of our mortality. While the soul is immortal, the body naturally decays after death. Naturally — but not always. On Aug. 28, the Diocese of Ávila in Spain reported, “Today the tomb of St. Teresa was opened and we have verified that it is in the same condition as when it was last...
Pope Francis Tells Young People in Singapore: ‘All Religions Are a Path to God’…
SINGAPORE – In a line that may once again stir reaction in more traditional Catholic quarters, Pope Francis on Friday wrapped up a three-day visit to Singapore, a country with large pockets of at least five different faiths, that “all religions are a path to God.” “They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all,” the pope said, who had set aside his prepared te...
Women’s fertility and the family are what make the world go round…
There is a video circulating on social media of an octogenarian woman offering her best advice. She is clad in large, chic glasses and chunky jewelry. To live her best life, she explains, a woman needs to be as independent as possible: no men, no children, lots of money, and lots of friends. As I watched, I was amazed at how compelling she was. And clearly, I’m not the only one — with thousan...
‘Story of a Soul’ podcast brings to life the “little way” of St. Thérèse…
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, c. 1889. (Image: Wikipedia) On the cross, Jesus said, “I thirst.” Our souls also thirst. And because those of us within the pro-life movement sometimes find ourselves discouraged and wondering how we can return our culture to one that respects life, reveres God, and protects the vulnerable, we long for ways to nourish our souls. We often look to saints for their example and...
What Makes Someone Want to Be Virtuous?
There is nothing like parenting, or teaching, or any real formation of the young to help us to see and focus on what really matters. If we have come to the insight that living well—or living virtuously—is at the center of the human vocation, then the enormity of a question begins to dawn on us: what makes people actually want to live that way? We are all familiar with the phenomenon of those—often...
In Jesus, our temperaments become facets of the Beatitudes…..
By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio – articles – email ) | Sep 09, 2024 Understanding emotional temperaments helps us understand our natural strengths and weaknesses and those of others. Self-knowledge of good and bad emotional and behavioral inclinations helps us grow in humility. However, the temperaments cannot adequately describe the emotional and spiritual make-up of Jesus. His sinless se...
On hacking Planned Parenthood…
By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Sep 09, 2024 I suppose the name of Planned Parenthood should be changed to Parenthood Denial since the bulk of the organization’s work consists not only of preventing pregnancy but of terminating pregnancy, that is, of preventing birth. The organization’s traffic in embryonic tissue has also been well-documented. There is, of course, a gre...
