Living Faith

Even as a child he learned from Joseph, the carpenter, and worked with wood, with His Holy hands.

After Labor Day: Reflection on the Dignity of all Human Work

By Deacon Keith Fournier • Catholic Online • 9/7/2010

A Catholic vision of work views it in light of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.The entirety of our human experience was assumed by Jesus, including our labor, our human work, no matter what form it takes. All work was transformed by Christ the worker! The Son of God worked. Even as a child he ...

The Happy Priest: Cultivate the Earth. Reflections for Labor Day Weekend

By Fr. James Farfaglia • Catholic Online • 9/7/2010

Some of us may be overwhelmed with the ever increasing problems of our modern world. With the continual unraveling of order and decency, some may think that it is futile to try and improve our situation. However, in times like these, there is a greater urgency to be passionate and ...

Pope's World Youth Day Message: Planted and Built up in Jesus Christ

Vatican Information Service • 9/5/2010

For this reason, dear friends, I encourage you to strengthen your faith in God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are the future of society and of the Church! As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians of Colossae, it is vital to have roots, a solid foundation! This is particularly true ...

'Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple'.

23d Sunday: The Crucible. The Happy Priest on The Meaning of Suffering

By Fr. James Farfaglia • Catholic Online • 9/5/2010

Too many of our contemporaries seek an easy life without suffering, without sacrifice, without renunciation, without mortification. Many people would like to stand under the cross of Jesus and cry out as did the jeering crowd on the first Good Friday, "Come down from the cross." ...

Mystical experience is always Christ-centered and Trinitarian.

Interview with Carmelite Priest: All Are Called to Authentically Christian Mysticism

By Miriam Diez i Bosch • Zenit News Agency • 9/2/2010

'Christian mysticism is characterized by the Incarnation, which is always a gift; it isn't something that the human being gains. Hence, mystical experience is always Christ-centered and Trinitarian. And it is revealed only gratuitously, without our merits.' ROME, Italy (Zenit.org) - Mysticism is ...

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a great seer known as the 'Teutonic prophetess'.

Pope Extols Hildegard of Bingen, Example to Women, all who Exercise True Spiritual Gifts

Vatican Information Service • 9/2/2010

'The sign of an authentic experience of the Holy Spirit, the source of all charisms, is that the individual possessing supernatural gifts never boasts of them, never shows them off and, above all, demonstrates complete obedience to ecclesiastical authority. It is the Church, through her pastors, ...

22d Sunday: The Happy Priest on the Gift and Virtue of Humility

By Fr. James Farfaglia • Catholic Online • 8/30/2010

The proud desire the esteem of other people. They thirst voraciously for adulation and they thrive on it. They boast of their own qualities and achievements; ostentatious and pompous in their relationships with others, the proud are prone to hypocrisy, assuming the appearance of virtue in ...

Harvard Grad Heads to the Convent: Mary Anne Marks and New Life in the Church

By Jennifer Hartline • Catholic Online • 8/28/2010

After graduating from Harvard University, Mary Anne Marks has her heart set on a new life with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. This remarkable young woman -- indeed, this flourishing young order of Sisters -- is a light in our darkened culture and a ray of hope ...

St. Monica with her son, St. Augustine, for whom she prayed over a period of seventeen years.

St. Monica: Mother of Augustine, Model of the Virtuous Mother

By F. K. Bartels • Catholic Online • 8/27/2010

The saints were men and women who, in love with the fullness of truth, not only lived for God, but lived in God. They were people whose love for God rose to such heights as to illumine all of created reality in its true light. In everything they saw God's reflection: in the eyes of a tender and ...

Francis Cardinal George and the Roman Missal.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: Decree on Implementation of the New Translation of the Roman Missal

By Deacon Keith Fournier • Catholic Online • 8/23/2010

How the Church worships is a prophetic witness to the truth of what she professes. Good worship becomes a dynamic means of drawing the entire human community into the fullness of life in Jesus Christ. It attracts - through beauty to Beauty. Worship informs and transforms both the person and ...