Today, the Church commemorates the memorial of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. Pope St. Pius V originally instituted the feast to mark the victory of the Christians at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. On that occasion, the rosary obtained the help of the Queen of Heaven in a contest against flesh and blood. [...]
When we encounter Christ and he asks, “Do you love me?” we can say “Yes” and know that all will be made well, for love will make good all the defects in our work and in ourselves. But without it, all our good work is nothing. No one would confuse my sisters’ and my art [...]
Having made known God’s will, Christ neither demands servile submission from us nor desires groveling self-abasement. He asks of us something far greater and costlier: “Will you follow me?” To riff on Tertullian – what has obedience to do with love? How does obedience to God show love for him? To our modern sensibilities, the two seem like [...]
It is a truth of the Church universally acknowledged that loving God is the end for which we are created. God’s love alone makes sense of and makes meaningful my life, your life. And yet loving God can seem difficult—not, to be sure, because God has loved us too little but rather because we have [...]