St. Patrick's Day has been celebrated on March 17 for fifteen hundred years since it is the day that Patrick, the missionary bishop who evangelized Ireland, passed from this world to eternity. This excerpt from his autobiographical work called the Confession makes clear that...
The famous parable of the Good Samaritan shows that mercy and compassion are not always convenient, and that love of neighbor can't be limited to those like us...
If God provides, then why is Murphy's Law a law that seems to apply even to devout Christians? Why to bad things happen to good people? Why so much resistance when we try to do God's will? This article seeks to show how trials...
Cyprian, a north African bishop of the third century, himself eventually died a martyr. Here he exhorts fellow Christians to courage as they face the contest of faith in a hostile pagan society. Following Ephesians 6, he urges Christians to put on the whole armor...
Augustine, reflecting on how the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted in the wilderness for forty days, points out that it is only by means of overcoming trials and temptations that we progress in the spiritual life and grow in holiness....
Bernard here dramatically celebrates Mary's Fiat, or statement of consent in response to the announcement by the archangel Gabriel, behold the handmaiden of the Lord; "let it me done to me according to your word." Appropriate for Advent or for the Solemnity of the Annunciation...
The Passion of Perpetua and Feliciy contains the prison diary of Vibia Perpetua a young woman martyred in Carthage in the third century AD. This is one of the only extant accounts from a Christian martyr shortly before execution and perhaps the earliest surviving Christian...
Why Lent has forty days, the meaning of the number 40 in the Old and New Testaments, and the meaning of the the fasting and three temptations of Jesus Christ in the Desert....
An excerpt from the account of the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna on the West Coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey). He was apprehended by the Romans in his eighties, on February 23 around the year 155 AD....
The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel includes such tough such as love your enemies, turn the other cheek, and judge not. How are we to understand such things and put them into practice? The examples of Jesus & St. Thomas More...