What makes a particular Church Council Ecumenical? How many have fit this definition down through history, and what is their importance and authority? The Catholic and Orthodox Churches have related but somewhat different answers to these questions....
Augustine shows how, inasmuch as Jesus Christ, the son of God, became man, he himself was the subject of predestination. By divine grace, not by human merits, Jesus was predestined to be of the line of David according to his sacred humanity....
St. Teresa of Avila on friendship with Jesus as the key to contemplation and the spiritual life and how all blessings, particularly contemplative prayer, come through the humanity of Christ. This selection is read on the Feast or liturgical memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila...
St. Peter Chrysologus contrasts the first, earthly Adam with our Lord Jesus Christ, viewed as the second, last Adam, the man from heaven....
Pope Paul VI was the first Pope we know of since Peter to return to the Holy Land on pilgrimage. While in Nazareth in 1964, he spoke these words about the lessons we can learn from the everyday life of the Holy Family during the...
Here, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council II praise Christ as the Perfect Man, like us in all things but sin. A moving tribute to the true humanity of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh....
In this excerpt from his work On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius says that the Word of God entered our world and assumed a body so that he could die for us, so great is his loving kindness. It is read by the Church on the...
The letter of Pope Leo to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches Commonly known as the "Tome of Leo" In the first half of the 5th century, the great doctrinal controversies in the Christian world all revolved around the divinity and humanity of Christ and how these...
On the first Easter, the Risen Lord makes clear to his frightened disciples he not a ghost or specter and in so doing shows why the gnostic gospels are bogus and did not make it into the Bible....
The writings of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch and one of the most inspiring of the Early Church Fathers, provide a revealing glimpse into the heart of an early Christian martyr as well as into the life and teaching of the Church just after the close...