Excerpts from two ancient Holy Week homilies followed by a special Holy Week thanksgiving prayer appropriate for either personal or corporate use. Super devotions for the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday....
The key penitential practices of Lent-prayer, fasting, and almsgiving or mercy are here explained by one of the greatest preachers of the early Church. Saint Peter Chrysologus shows how Lenten prayer, mercy and fasting are one, and they give life to each other....
Hilary of Poitiers explains what the "Fear of the Lord" really means in Proverbs, Psalms and Wisdom literature of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Lord Jesus Christ is himself the way to the fear of the Lord that leads to perfect love....
Ambrose here speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Wisdom of God upon whom we must meditate day and night, whether we are at work or rest, at home or abroad (see Deuteronomy 6:4-9)....
Charles Borromeo, the bishop apostle of Northern Italy during the Catholic Reformation, on the primacy of prayer, read on his feast day, November 4. Though he is here addressing priests, his advice on meditation, distractions and recollection is valuable for all Christians....
Here St. Ambrose comments on the biblical theme of God as Our Refuge (Pslam 45) and emphasizes God's incomparable goodness for which we must thirst as if deer longing for fountains of water....
Tertullian, in the late second century, writes of the power of Christian prayer, which replaces the sacrifices of old and makes us priests who are worshipers in spirit and in truth. Prayer is one of the three traditional tools for spiritual growth in Lent...
This Lenten and Holy Week meditation on Psalm 45 and the contemplation of beauty represents a message that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) sent to a meeting of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation in August 2002. The group was meeting in...
Saint John Chrysostom here speaks of the gift of prayer as continual conversation with God that proceeds from longing for God that lifts the soul into the heavens where it embraces God and brings great joy and light to the soul....
This post on the Lord's Prayer comes from one of the earliest treatises on the Our Father, written around AD 240 by Cyprian of Carthage. It discusses one of the three pillars of Lenten penance, namely, the importance and power of prayer....