In Mary’s body, we see the total gift of God’s grace in raising and glorifying our lowly bodies to that “lofty goal” unattainable by our own efforts. All the evil which eats up our bodies—our diseases, discomforts, lusts, and addictions—will be trampled upon not by abandoning the body, but by glorifying it. As a child, [...]
As the man pleaded his case, Father Maximilian Kolbe came forward and offered his life for the one pleading. The German commandant of Auschwitz—probably rather shocked—agreed, and Kolbe, with nine others, stripped naked and entered the concrete bunker. As Hillsdale students approach my desk on the fourth floor of Delp Hall, several things stand or [...]
At the very beginning of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius writes that they have been written to enable a person “to conquer oneself.” The way this is done is by embracing the stoicism kept at bay in the early Church but introduced into Christianity at the Renaissance. When most of our school friends were dreaming [...]
God is a person, not just an idea. When he raises up saints, he does so not to have an ideologue to debate the doubters, but in order to have someone to carry on the work of Christ, who not only preached, but was a living example of what he preached. God raised up Saint [...]
Vivaldi's music draws our attention to divine mysteries unknown to Socrates, overlooked by the Scribes and Pharisees, and difficult even for Christ’s disciples to grasp. It offers us valuable assistance as we advance virtue by virtue to the brightness of the saints, pointing us to the sources of heavenly aid without which even the mightiest [...]
A beauty-first approach recovers a sense of life as a great adventure. To be human is to be disposed to fall in love with reality, to be struck by the beauty of the things of this world and thus, through the wound it opens in our heart, to be drawn into reality, to want to penetrate [...]
Street saints are people who have heard the call and obeyed. They are very different kinds of people in very different places, but they have one thing in common: They have heard the call to go, and they have said “here I am Lord, send me.” Why should anyone embark on the way of compassion? [...]
Education follows the same law as the physical universe, which is sustained and carried on in dependence on certain centres of power and laws of operation. Education has its history in Christianity, and its doctors or masters in that history. A Benedictine Education, by John Henry Newman (160 pages, Cluny Media) As the physical universe [...]
The three vows of the Benedictine monk are obedience, stability, and conversion of life. In our own ways, we can follow this example, making it real by paying attention to prayer, cracking the books in solid study, and rolling up our sleeves in the honest, hard work of rebuilding what has fallen into despair and [...]
If our hearts were truly not in this world but in heaven, all the torments that the world could devise would give us no pain. Let us therefore send our hearts to heaven by sending our wealth there. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, by Thomas More (248 pages, Cluny Media) XIII. Concerning the wise [...]
Everyday life is the true setting for your lives as Christians. Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work and your affections are. There you have your daily encounter with Christ. It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify [...]
Of all the English bishops, only Bishop John Fisher of Rochester publicly opposed Henry VIII's mandatory Oath of Allegiance, which unlawfully declared King Henry the head of the Church of England. The bishop's stand ultimately cost him his life. Saint John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr If more Catholic Bishops were like Fisher more Catholic politicians [...]
The final word on the legacy of John Fisher and Thomas More, and the final judgment (under God) on why we should see them as heroes, is given by G. K. Chesterton, a man who proves in his very self that the killing of More and Fisher did not kill learning, laughter or holiness: "There [...]
Several centuries before Edmund Burke, Thomas More warned against theorizing about the perfect society and advised statesmen to do their best with the form of government their people have passed on to them. Though he himself favored one form of government over another, he admitted that we rarely have the power to create the government [...]