In Matthew's gospel, Jesus makes the statement "my yoke is easy, my burden light." For many of us who follow him, this does not seem to square with our experience. This post discusses the reasons for this....
Jesus says to deny self, pick up the cross and follow him. But he also says to love your neighbor as yourself. Is self-love always wrong?...
This selection on the cross comes from Hans Urs von Balthasar's book The Heart of the World. This beautiful mediation on the piercing of Christ's heart by the soldiers lance as recounted in John 19 is a poignant mediation for Lent or Holy Week...
7 minute podcast by Dr. Italy focusing on the true meaning of the Sacred Heart of Jesus based on the chief scriptural text connected with this feast and devotion.Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus can be found throughout the ages but became particularly widespread...
The Fatherhood of God has come under fire with the rise of feminism. If we know that God is pure spirit who transcends male and female, masculine and feminine, why preserve what some believe to be the antiquated, patriarchal practice of referring to the divinity...
Bonaventure reflects on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the meaning of the blood and water flowing from the side of Christ crucified (John 19:34), the living water of sacramental grace coming from the loving heart of the Savior. He reflects especially on several lines...
In Part 1 of Understanding the Mass, we examined how the Mass relates to the Sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. In this, part 2 of the series, we ask in what way the Eucharist can be said to be our sacrifice, the sacrifice...
The Feast of Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Christ, was instituted during the lifetime of Thomas Aquinas as a proclamation of faith in the real presence (aka transubstantiation) of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament. This selection, read annually on...
While the word "transubstantiation" is not employed here, the substance of this doctrine of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist is evident in this passage from St. Ambrose's treatise On the Mysteries, dating to AD 380. This excerpt explains the power of the words of...
Trinity Sunday celebrates the Church's faith in the triune God, one God in three persons. This doctrine has baffled people for 2,000 years. Given that it is so hard to accept, why bother with it? What difference does the trinitarian dogma really make to how...