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Pulchra es et decora…Thou art beautiful and comely, daughter of Jerusalem, terrible as an army in battle array. (5th Antiphon of Laudes. Song of Songs 6:4)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

Later this year, on the eighth day of December we will celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which celebrates the mysterious initial stage, the starting point of that incomparable beauty we find in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today, on the feast of the Assumption, we contemplate that same beauty lifted up to Heaven, consummated, Mary’s loveliness at its zenith. But why is this important?

“Beauty will save the world.” This shining phrase, cast like a gem into the rather muddy pond of a novel by an early modern Russian author, has caught the attention of many a Catholic […]

At that time: Peter said to Jesus: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? (Matthew 19:27)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

The Holy Rule, written by Saint Benedict whose feast we are celebrating, has sometimes been called “the Bible of monks.” Some may think this a hyperbole, a mere pious exaggeration, but, like the Bible from which it is inspired, the Rule for monks is something of a universe of its own, an imposing spiritual landscape, where one encounters that fullness of truth, love, and being, which is the hallmark of the Catholic faith. Despite the austerity of its language in many passages, this thin but great book forms our souls in multiple ways, including its teaching of a sentiment that […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very Dear Sons,

The color for today’s solemnity, as we are all well aware, is deep red, symbolizing the blood of martyrs. It is no secret that the Holy Apostles died the death of martyrs, excepting Saint John, who, according to a tradition reported by Saint Jerome, underwent a trial of death at the Latin gate of Rome under the order of the Emperor Domitian, but miraculously escaped from the cauldron of boiling oil into which he had been thrown. He lived many years afterward in God’s Providence in order to care for the Blessed Virgin Mary, confided to his keeping at the Cross. From his home at Ephesus, he led the churches of Asia Minor and completed his Gospel, no doubt, and the book of Revelation, the […]

Ecce panis Angelorum…Lo, upon the altar lies, / Hidden deep from human eyes, / Bread of Angels from the skies, / Made the Bread of moral man. (Lauda Sion, Sequence of the Mass, composed by Saint Thomas Aquinas.)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, My very dear sons,

Throughout some two thousand years of history—much of it marked by major or even spectacular events—Our Holy Mother Church has seen and suffered much. Many a Caesar has tested Her holy resolve with outright or hidden persecution; not a few heretics have worked to pervert the true Faith in multiple manners, all to no avail (in the end), thanks to the grace of God. But never before our own time has there been, on such a large scale it seems, a general deprivation of the […]

And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with diverse tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak. (Acts 2:1-4)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very Dear Sons,

“Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice,” wrote an English poet. (Poem of Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice.”) Another mused, “This is the way the world ends / Not with a […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

The mystery of the Ascension of the Lord is filled, “charged” as we might say, with theological hope. Everything about the Gospel scene and the gripping narrative of the Acts of the Apostles relating Jesus’ departure from earth stirs up in us the invincible conviction that our life has only begun here below and that a supernatural happiness awaits us. “And I say to you, I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father” (Matthew 26:29). Monks live from this kind of radical hope focusing, not on the fleeting existence of this present world, but on life beyond the horizon of the visible world here […]