“’All these things shall be added unto you’ ‘He knoweth that ye have need of these things.’ St. Teresa of Avila says we should not trouble our Lord with such petty trifles. We should ask great things of Him.  So I pray for Russia, for our own country, for our fellow men, our fellow workers, for the sick, the starving, the dying, the dead.” These words from Dorothy Day’s On Pilgrimage (a collection of her writings from the Catholic Worker) follow a list of her everyday struggles and needs. She reminds herself, and by extension her readers, never to tire of bringing to the Lo ..read more

In the present time of trial, Catholics need examples of piety and of the critical exercise of reason. These two complementary excellences are on display in the late Fr. Marvin R. O’Connell’s Telling Stories That Matter: Memoirs and Essays (St. Augustine’s Press, 2020). O’Connell (1930-2016) is best-known for his narrative histories, among which loom large The Oxford Conspirators (1969), John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (1988), and Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (1994). The reader of these monumental books ..read more

Faith&Culture offers this selection from St. Francis de Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God (1616) as part of its ongoing reflection on the nobility of the human face. In a delightful and admirable way, Solomon describes the love of the Savior and the devout soul in that divine work called the Song of Songs. And so that we might more easily consider the spiritual love brought about between God and us when the movements of our hearts correspond with the inspirations of his divine majesty, Solomon employs the metaphor of the love of a chaste shepherd and a modest shepherdess ..read more

Faith&Culture offers this selection from St. John Paul II’s Letter to Families (1994) in homage to the incomparable gift that was his pontificate. The universe, immense and diverse as it is, the world of all living beings, is inscribed in God’s fatherhood, which is its source. This can be said, of course, on the basis of an analogy, thanks to which we can discern, at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, the reality of fatherhood and motherhood and consequently of the human family. The interpretative key enabling this discernment is provided by the principle of the “ima ..read more

“Why does opium make us sleep? Because of its soporific power.” So ran Molière’s send-up of self-important Parisian physicians. Sohrab Ahmari’s “The Trouble with Christian Leftism” invites a similar question-and-answer. By taxing progressive Christians with having succumbed to the opium of the intellectuals—Marxism in its various forms—Ahmari invites us to ask what is its hidden power. Why are we so prone to be always looking for the next social-scientific solution to our problems? Because we pine for a knowledge that will take away the burden of living by practical reason. Aristotle sized up ..read more

Ave, gratia plena. Hail, full of grace. Luke 1:28 Throughout the whole world, the ancient Church was of one mind, always addressing the Mother of God in the words of the angel: Ave Maria, gratia plena. Our immediate ancestors, joining their elders in devout harmony, sang the Ave Maria always and everywhere, thinking themselves to be pleasing the King of Heaven by reverently honoring his Mother, and not seeing a more proper way to honor her than by imitating the respect that God himself had decreed that she be shown on the day when his Divine Majesty honored all mankind in this Virgin by b ..read more

“And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.” St. Thérèse opens her Story of a Soul with a reflection on this verse. She says that the verse contains the mystery of her own vocation, meditating on the words “those whom he desired.” It seemed to Thérèse that Jesus had simply chosen her out of desire for her, not because she was worthy, but simply because it pleased him to do so. This fact troubled Thérèse: “I wondered for a long time why God has preferences, why all souls don’t receive an equal amount of graces.” Specifically, she wond ..read more

“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” Mother Teresa became well known for speaking about “the Gospel on five fingers,” or “the five-finger Gospel.” With her ever luminous smile, she would hold up her hand and count off each word with a finger: “You. Did. It. To. Me.” It can seem like a radical oversimplification of the Christian faith, but the saint, with her graced wisdom, is on to something here. In Matthew’s gospel, the five-finger moment occurs in the twenty-fifth chapter and it’s a moment unique to ..read more

As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the Augustine Institute, it might well occur to readers of Faith and Culture to ask: why is St. Augustine the patron of an Institute dedicated to the New Evangelization? St. John Paul II, after all, is the man who coined the phrase “the New Evangelization” and there are many other saints who are known for their evangelical work more than St. Augustine. Nevertheless, to the founders of the Institute, St. Augustine was the obvious choice. The Augustine Institute is an educational apostolate, dedicated to helping Catholics at every level to un ..read more

“But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.” Luke 14:10 is a verse taken from the end of one of Jesus’ parables about a wedding feast. He warns us against coming into a wedding feast and taking a spot at the head table (so to speak), because we may suffer public disgrace when we are asked to move. Rather, Jesus recommends taking the lowest spot and then if the host decides to promote us, we will be honored rather than humiliated.&nb ..read more