Showing posts with label Saints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saints. Show all posts

Monday, April 11, 2011

Story of a Soul - Pope Says So

St.Thérèse costumed as St. Joan of Arc

Some years back, I was walking among items at the yard sale of our school's Oktoberfest. I found three (of the four) Liturgy of the Hours prayer books and a book I felt strangely drawn to: the Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I bought them all for a pittance and took them home.

While I've delved into the Hours, generally via the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I never opened the Little Flower's autobiography. Until now.

Benedict XVI just encouraged us, you see, to read her Story of a Soul. Talk about timely. And, just in case I had any doubts about the importance of doing so, I notice that the translator of my copy happens to be ... Monsignor Ronald Knox. Hmm. Time to get started.

UPDATE: Listen or read here.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Dom Bosco - Relics Touring

The relics of Saint John Bosco will be visiting the United States and Canada very soon. Read where you may be able to venerate the great saint's remains here. And, if you don't know of his famous vision of the trials of Mother Church and the Holy Father, go here.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

A Little Comparison - Your Choice


The nexus of the cultural clash involving the Christian faith and the Scimitar is at the point where exemplars of the two most perfectly follow their respective models; namely, Christ and the Prophet. Nearly all of their fellows will say that the persons who do the best job imitating (fill in the blank) is the most devout, righteous, holy, etc.

So, then, one must look closely at the respective model for the Christian and the Muslim. Others have done so, so I will not in this brief space. The point is, for the Christian and the Muslim anthropological, epistemological, ontological certitude emanates from the being and the words of their respective mediator of what humans were created to be.

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church - the Guardian of Christian truth since the inception of the Church - makes astonishing truth claims about our Founder, Jesus of Nazareth: that he was born of a Virgin who conceived by God's Holy Spirit; that he was wholly God while wholly man; that lived among us, performed mighty signs ("miracles"), instituted both his Church with Sacraments by which we receive God's grace, was put to death on a cross, was raised from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. One need only read the accounts of the Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - to see that Jesus made similar truth claims about himself.

C. S. Lewis observed that, logically, he was (a) a liar, (b) mad, or (c) telling the truth.

The followers of the founder of the Scimitar make no such exorbitant claims about their model, only that he wrote the Koran which his Deity dictated to him, word for word. His life, again, can be read about elsewhere.

The question we must ask is, Which model, mediator of God's truth will one choose to believe? Concomitantly, which truth can truly lead humanity away from its bloodthirstiness, its fallenness?

The West may not have a choice much longer.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus +

An essay of the little way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux by Rev. Jean C. J. d'Elbeé, Humble Confidence.