Friendship with Christ will only become perfect when we reach heaven where we will see him face to face. This life is a search for the face of God, since “now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am [...]
Our Blessed Mother wants nothing more for us than to have a true relationship with her Son. In the current storm of misinformation, our Lady acts as a shield to protect the orthodoxy of our faith that keeps our eyes and hearts fixed on Christ. After a previous attempt, I wish to promote another title for [...]
The priest or religious who takes a vow of Chastity, binding them to Christ as to their spiritual married partner, will be lost without daily access to the contemplation that is for them the indispensable means of uniting them with him. From the very beginning, the faithful have been taught that the Church is the [...]
As institutions crumble around us, our constructed selves are stripped away, and we are more and more reduced to the most basic and existential thing: namely our relationship to God. Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection's method for “practicing the presence of God” consisted of keeping up a continuous dialogue with Him in one’s heart. Brother [...]
As a member of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity, one offers 15 Hail Marys daily for themselves and fellow members. These are not offered as a transaction (I do this, and God will make me pure in exchange). Instead, they are offered as an invitation. For most saints, the patron-to-beneficiary link is fairly straightforward. There is more [...]
Learning to love is more important than anything else because it guarantees the happiness that nothing else can. That is why the whole of the spiritual life and the mystic way is dedicated to teaching how love can be learned, sustained and perfected. I once attended a conference titled “The Moral Malaise” during which the [...]
What happens to the muscles of our bodies can happen to the muscles of our hearts too. This can happen with ever greater intensity when spiritual weightlifting is practised in prayer, in the mystic way. The difference between conversion and repentance is so important that it needs further explanation. I hope to do this by [...]
In this book I am not just trying to view God’s Plan, but our personal and unique part in it. God can only enable us to participate in his plan to the degree to which we are prepared to respond to his call as the Apostles did, and those who radically chose to follow him [...]
Even if we don’t climb to the height of holiness, or enjoy mystical contemplation to the point that our whole lives become suffused with it, we can strive to be more prayerful than we are, and we need to do nothing else but to give ourselves to God throughout the day to accomplish it. One [...]
Without returning to the prayer and the spirituality of our forefathers, the Church has seemed to have gradually deteriorated at every level. However, I am now witnessing the many who are beginning to see the truth. They are beginning to see and do what can alone bring personal renewal, and Church renewal, by generating and [...]
After the Second Vatican Council, not only were mystics and saints all but absent, but so also were the sort of new and vital religious orders to help spread and disseminate the teachings of the Council. However, as history has shown, pendulums do swing. St John Henry Newman’s “New Spring” is at last on the [...]
If you still get distracted in prayer, still get angry unreasonably, still dread lots of tasks that you should be doing—take your focus off the feelings. Instead, ask yourself: do I know what I should be doing? If not, pray to God to show you. Two truths of the Christian life: First, self-reflection is a [...]
Why did the introduction of the new liturgy not bring about the long-anticipated renewal for which we were all longing? Without the deep personal relationship with Christ that develops and grows in personal prayer, the liturgy can soon become ineffective, not in itself, but in those who are not prepared to receive it. Many of [...]
By prayer, I do not just mean saying prayers or performing prayers of obligation but practising the deep prayer that leads onward beyond first beginnings into the mystic way. It is only here that we will come to know and experience the love that surpasses the understanding. When the constitution on the liturgy was promulgated [...]