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This Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, Year C, and the Church’s readings ask us to prepare for Christmas in a serious, radical way — in many ways by doing the opposite of what the rest of the culture is doing right now. Here are takeaways from this week’s readings, taken from previous This Sunday posts and the Extraordinary Story podcast. First: Advent in the Church is the opposite of the Secular “Holiday Season.” December 1 in America means the Secular Christmas Season has started. But at Mass for the  First Sunday of Advent, the liturgy sounds like the opposite of a Christmas commercial. Ads promise the “Christmas you deserve” but Mass begins with a prayer pleading that Christ make us worthy of him. Christmas at the store is “the most wonderful time of the year,” but today’s pra...

(Image: Word on Fire) Is Catholicism still acceptable to the technocratic elites of our secular, post-Christian age? Certainly not the Catholic claim to uniquely know and safeguard absolute truth on faith and morals. Nor in the Catholic Church’s repudiation of the sexual revolution’s claim to universal “rights” of sexual freedom, contraception, or abortion. No, the only safe way to represent one’s Catholic faith in the public square today is to assert one’s sympathy for the victim: the poor, the widow, the oppressed member of a minority class. Leaving aside the blatant inconsistency in this sentiment—why isn’t the life in the womb a victim worthy of protection?—it’s a curious quality of modernity. As long as the Catholic Church hosts Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, sponsors food and clothin...

(Image: Anne Nygård/Unsplash.com) For some Christians, Advent is simply an aid to memory. It is certainly that. It is also much more. For Advent is a season not only of remembering what happened long ago in order to prepare ourselves for the liturgical celebration of Christ’s Nativity, of preparing ourselves to receive Him in our hearts in the sacraments and in prayer, and of preparing ourselves to receive him when He comes again to judge the living and the dead. Advent is about past, present, and future. We do tend to focus on the first one. For it is not only necessary but delightful to remember how it was that God fulfilled His promises. How wonderful to think back on the prophecies from Isaiah and the other prophets of a light in darkness, a wonderful counselor, a prince of peace! How ...

‘I think it’s because our work, regardless of what ministry, is specifically connected with eternal values,’ Sister Carolyn Martin told the Register. ‘Our employer is God himself.’ Some might be surprised to learn that religious work leads to greater personal fulfillment than any other profession. But not Msgr. Stephen Rossetti.  “Priestly happiness is one of the great secrets of our time,” said Msgr. Rossetti, a research associate professor at The Catholic University of America. “And I’m glad it’s coming out.”  Last week, a column in the Washington Post brought the news of happiness among religious workers to a secular audience. Citing studies from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it found that religious work causes a higher sense of satisfaction than any ot...

By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Nov 25, 2024 When I started the car this morning, a message appeared on the dashboard: “Roads may be icy.” Right. We’ve had very little rain here for the last several weeks, and the roads are dry. But the temperature was below freezing early in the morning— as it will be, off and on, for the next three or four months— so the reminder was useful. Noted. As I pulled out of our little dirt lane, another message appeared, warning me that I was low on fuel. Not very low, actually; the car’s computer calculated that I could drive another 70 miles before I hit empty. So that alert would be helpful if I had been planning to drive across the Mojave Desert. As it happens, in the next few days I have no plans that will take me more than a mile o...

Father Carlos Martins I begin today with awful news about Father Carlos Martins, the Catholic exorcist I’ve praised recently in this place. This broke over the weekend: A St. Jude relic traversing the United States came to a stop this week, while the priest organizing the tour faces an Illinois police investigation over alleged inappropriate conduct involving children. The priest, Fr. Carlos Martins, is well-known for ”The Exorcist Files,” a 2023 podcast series featuring dramatic audio portrayals of allegedly demonic encounters Martins claims to have experienced in ministry as an exorcist. According to a statement from Queen of the Apostles parish in Joliet, Illinois, Martin was accused Thursday of an unspecified “incident” involving students which prompted Fr. Michael Lane, parish moderat...

Above: Sabrina Peckham (photo posted online by her family) “As we love Christ in our neighbor, everywhere and always, He will draw us unto Himself… Christ always comes to us in others.”  – Servant of God, Catherine Dougherty In his essay, “Why I Had a Mass Offered for Janis Joplin,” Rick Becker suggested we do the same for other deceased personalities who have entertained or inspired us. This would, he noted, be a way of thanking them, and likely win for us their celestial prayers. I was glad Becker promoted such Masses, because I too have had them said—for the souls of authors Andre Dubus, Ernest Hemingway, and Kurt Vonnegut, as well as a songwriter who’s meant a lot to me, and who happened to know Joplin, the uniquely talented but tormented, Townes Van Zandt. Masses for the dead are...

Solemnity of Christ the KingBy Fr. Victor Feltes Today’s psalm says: “The Lord is King, in splendor robed… Your throne stands firm from of old… Your decrees are worthy of trust indeed…” The Old Testament prophets agreed. Isaiah said “the Lord is our King, it is he who will save us.” Jeremiah said our God “is the living God, the eternal King.” And Zephaniah said “the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst.” At the center of human history, when Jesus Christ is born among us, he comes as King as well. “Behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews?’” And when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the crowd cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of Israel!” Pontius Pilate unknowing proclaimed this truth whe...

Joy might seem an arbitrary thing in its coming and going. That joy is hard to figure out—both what it is and where it comes from—is no surprise, given the depths of the human heart. A question that often roils in my mind is whether I can simply choose to be joyful. I think the answer is affirmative and worth a brief consideration, while setting aside the wonderful and essential aspects of joy as a gift and a fruit. Indeed, choosing joy is surely a necessary aspect of receiving it as a gift. I come at this now from an elementary perspective: can I ‘choose joy’ when I am not ‘feeling’ joyful? One basic truth expounded by the wise can shed a very encouraging light and offer practical direction. Joy, says Thomas Aquinas, is when our will rests or delights in the presence of some good that we ...

Share via: Long before cowboy churches entered the Protestant landscape of the United States, one quite well known cowboy made his journey into the Catholic Church. William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, was one the most famous figures of the American Old West. Gaining his moniker due to his work as a buffalo hunter after the American Civil War, Cody would go on to create Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, a circus-type stage show portraying a version of life in the American West. This show would eventually become a world-wide phenomenon, traveling across the U.S. and Europe, and included Native Americans invited by Cody to tour with him to provide an accurate representation of their heritage. William Cody was not an overly religious man for much of his life, though he grew up in a r...

A suggestion by an Eastern Rite bishop that Catholics in the United States once again give up eating meat on Fridays throughout the year has drawn interest from more than a dozen bishops in the country. Several bishops told the Register they hope the U.S. bishops discuss the idea at their next gathering in June 2025. But an early canvas suggests a renewed practice, if it occurs, might look different from the Church’s previous rule, which forbade Catholics from eating meat on almost all Fridays of the year under pain of mortal sin. Several bishops told the Register they don’t want to go that route. “A voluntary return to an act of penance, for instance meatless Fridays, would be an opportunity for Catholics not only to demonstrate their shared commitment to care for God’s creation, but also...

Obadiah, the crux of the matter, and Bible Bees Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to JD read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Hey everybody, Eastern Catholic Churches celebrate today the holy prophet Obadiah, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. Obadiah, who lived in the 6th century B.C., authored the shortest text included as a book of the Old Testament, a warning to the Edomite kingdom that a betrayal of Jerusalem during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege would lead to its destruction.  The prophecy of Obadiah is fewer than 500 words. You could read the whole thing on your morning coffee break. Without too much work, you could probably memorize it, if you wanted to say that you have an entire scriptural book committed to memory (assuming you’re not this girl, Anastasia...