Living Faith

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 ...

Although developing and strengthening our spiritual life requires an intense effort, all of our work will only be successful with the help of God's grace.

The Happy Priest: Never Give Up, Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Gate

By Fr. James Farfaglia • Catholic Online • 8/23/2010

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls self-mastery a training in human freedom. "The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy" (#2339). The Catechism goes on to say that "self-mastery is a ...

The truth about reality begins and ends in God; the Alpha and Omega of Truth; the omnipotent, omniscient and immutable Being whose divine mind has preordained what is and what is to be. Reality is precisely and exactly what God says it is -- nothing more and nothing less.

Reflection: The Catholic Church is Reality As It Truly is

By F. K. Bartels • Catholic Online • 8/20/2010

Contrary to popular modern-day belief, the truth about reality is not subject to the malleable and ever-changing tides of relativism, nor is it governed by the subjective opinion of those whose view of themselves as kings and queens over reality has allowed for the false notion that they may ...

It is time for Catholics to fall in love with the Lord and His Church - and live the ever ancient and ever new faith in a dynamic way, offering it as the alternative which Brett McCracken and so many other Christians are searching for.

Commentary: Give me that Old Time Religion: Choosing to be Catholic

By Deacon Keith Fournier • Catholic Online • 8/19/2010

'Give me that old time religion' is the title of an old hymn often associated with certain segments of Protestant Christianity. However, I suggest to my Catholic friends, it is our song. In this age of 'novelties' and 'Wanna Be Cool' versions of Christianity, amidst the despair occasioned ...

Of the 125 passengers and six crew members aboard the Aires airline jet, the only one killed was a 68-year-old woman.

'It's a Miracle', Only one person dies in Colombian jet crash

By Catholic Online • Catholic Online • 8/17/2010

Only one passenger died after a Boeing 737 jetliner crashed in a thunderstorm and broke apart as it slid onto the runway on a Caribbean island this week. The governor of Colombia's San Andres Island, Pedro Gallardo said it "was a miracle and we have to give thanks to God." LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic ...