Ephrem, on the brilliant light of God's wisdom that illuminates us especially initially through the sacrament of baptism and daily through the sacramental table of the eucharist. The sacraments are a mirror reflecting God's beauty and a pledge of our future resurrection....
Isn't Advent great? Welcome to the season where the only song we sing for four weeks is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel! It's the best! Advent is my favorite season, and not just because, as a music minister, I get to play more songs with minor keys. Advent is my favorite...
St. Augustine explains how we can rejoice and even delight in something that we can’t yet see and don’t yet possess. In so doing, he helps us understand better the power of the theological virtue of hope....
The symbolic meaning of the sacrament of baptism according to Cyril of Jerusalem, bishop of Jerusalem in the middle of the fourth century and one of the most important sources we have for how the church celebrated the sacraments during that era. In his...
The selection from Origen’s Exhortation to Martyrdom is read on the feast of martyrs Saints Marcellinus and Peter on June 2. Marcellinus, a Roman priest, and Peter, an exorcist, were martyred together in Rome during the persecution of Diocletian around 303 AD. They evidently faced...
Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict XV on St. Ephrem, the Syrian, written in 1920. The Latin title is Principi Apostolorum Petro....
[dropcaps type='normal' font_size='65' color='' background_color='' border_color='']W[/dropcaps]hat is man, that you are mindful of him? What is this new mystery surrounding me? I am both small and great, both lowly and exalted, mortal and immortal, earthly and heavenly. I am to be buried with Christ and to...
[dropcaps type='normal' font_size='100' color='' background_color='' border_color='']I[/dropcaps]gnatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church of God the Father, and of the beloved Jesus Christ, which has through mercy obtained every kind of gift, which is filled with faith and love, and is deficient in no...
Here Maximus the Confessor comments on the famous phrase from the gospels "no one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house" (Matthew 5:15 and Luke 8:16 and 11:33). ...
Columban. also known as Columbanus, here shows passionate fire of his Celtic monastic spirituality. Commenting on Luke 12:37-38 where Jesus praises those servants who stay awake, their lamps brightly burning in expectation of the master's return, Columban asks that his lamp would burn brighly...