It was July 2, 1945, at eight o’clock in the evening. It was time to lock the doors of the shrine for the night, and as I came out of the chapel, I saw that it was raining—soft, summer rain, cool and refreshing after the heat of the day. It was almost symbolic, I thought,
We were made to ask the big questions: For what purpose do I exist? What happens to me when I die? Is there an all-powerful God who loves me? If we accept the lie that life has no meaning, that this is all there is, we’re led into what Pope St. John Paul II described
The Synoptic Gospels present Jesus as a teacher, healer, and exorcist. He was not very unusual in that. There were other charismatic healers and exorcists at the time. There was, however, something very unusual in the way Jesus did exorcisms. We can best see this in His first public miracle in the Gospel of Mark
Although we should do what we can to avoid the temptations we are able to foresee, temptations will nevertheless arise that we are unable to avoid. These we are called to resist. The first measure in resisting temptation is to seek the help of God. If we think that we must resist all temptation by
Our interior conversations come to silence when we learn to transform them into prayer. As a rule, only God can have direct access to the hidden thoughts of our hearts and minds. But it is commonly held that the saints and angels can also know our thoughts when we freely choose to speak to them
In prayer, the Church turns toward Almighty God; accordingly, prayers are part of the Church’s liturgical action. Sacramentals “always include a prayer, often accompanied by a specific sign, such as the laying on of hands, the sign of the cross, or the sprinkling of holy water (which recalls Baptism).” At this point, a first and
No saint has escaped temptation. Three times was the Master of them all tempted by the evil one — in the desert, on the high mountain, on the pinnacle of the Temple. The devil was beaten then; but the devil never learns from his defeats. He keeps on in the hope that if nine hundred
The unexpected death of a loved one is the hardest for people to deal with, particularly when the person is in seemingly good health and there was no warning to prepare the survivors. The more involved this person was in your life, the bigger the void that needs to be filled when he is not
Aurelius Augustinus, who is considered by most to be the greatest Father of the Church, was born on November 13, 354 A.D., in Numidia at Tagaste. The product of a classical education, Augustine spent many formative years espousing the truth of Manichaeism and Neoplatonism as he taught rhetoric in Milan. But in 387, he was
Below is one miracle recounted through the intercession of St. Therese. On March 3, 1972, Nogent-le-Roi’s firefighters took me to the hospital in Dreux after I fell off a horse. I had lost consciousness, and my scalp was bleeding profusely. Two days later, I was still unconscious. My condition had worsened, and an ambulance drove