Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Feast of Holy Family An address by Pope Paul VI (Nazareth, January 5, 1964).  Taken from the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for the Sunday in the Octave of Easter. Nazareth, a model Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ’s life was like and even to understand his Gospel. Here we can observe and ponder the simple appeal of the way God’s Son came to be known, profound yet full of hidden meaning. And gradually we may even learn to imitate him. Here we can learn to realize who Christ really is. And here we can sense and take account of the conditions and circumstances that surrounded and affected his life on earth: the places, the tenor of the times, the culture, the language, religious customs, in brief, everything which Jesus used to make himself known to the world. Here everything speaks to us, everything has meaning. Here we can learn the importance of spiritual discipline for all who wish to follow Christ and to live by ...

Sermon by St. Quodvultdeus for the Feast of Holy Innocents, Martyrs (mid 5th century). Taken from the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for December 28th. They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come. Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children. You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of ...

Sermon by St. Augustine of Hippo on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist (early 5th century). Taken from the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for December 27th.  Life itself was revealed in the Flesh We announce what existed from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have touched with our own hands.  Who could touch the Word with his hands unless  the Word was made flesh and lived among us?   Now this Word, whose flesh was so real that he could be touched by human hands, began to be flesh in the Virgin Mary’s womb; but he did not begin to exist at that moment. We know this from what John says:  What existed from the beginning.  Notice how John’s letter bears witness to his Gospel, which you just heard a moment ago:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.   Someone might interpret the phrase the Word of life to mean a word about Christ, rather than Christ’s body ...

Sermon by St. Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Feast of St. Stephen (Circa AD 500) Taken from the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for December 26th Armament of Love Yesterday we celebrated the birth in time of our eternal King. Today we celebrate the triumphant suffering of his soldier. Yesterday our king, clothed in his robe of flesh, left his place in the virgin’s womb and graciously visited the world. Today his soldier leaves the tabernacle of his body and goes triumphantly to heaven. Our king, despite his exalted majesty, came in humility for our sake; yet he did not come empty-handed. He brought his soldiers a great gift that not only enriched them but also made them unconquerable in battle, for it was the gift of love, which was to bring men to share in his divinity. He gave of his bounty, yet without any loss to himself. In a marvelous way he changed into wealth the poverty of his faithful followers while remaining in full possession of his own inexhaustible riche...

Homily by Pope St. Leo the Great on Christmas Day (5th century) Taken from the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for December 25th Christian, remember your dignity Dearly beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.  No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.  In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by whi...

For the next several days, I will be posting the sermons from the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours . If you have never looked at the Liturgy of the Hours, this is a great time to do so. The hymns, antiphons, psalms and readings from the Christmas Season are among the best. Now that I have started praying the Divine Office, I can never go back. The Hours are meant for everyone to pray. The liturgical seasons cannot be participated in properly without it. This is my favorite Christmas to date thanks to the Liturgy of the Hours. All the great Advent prayers lead in perfectly to the Nativity of Our Lord and stir up within you a longing for Jesus Christ's coming that is fulfilled in the the Christmas Vigil. All the Sermons for the Second Reading are excellent, so I will just be posting them in their entirety and adding little to nothing myself. I am a day behind because yesterday was just too much fun to take the time to start then. So with that,  Merry Christmas! O...

Two things today. They may or may not be related. First, today of course is the 50th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. A lesser known fact: this is also the 50th anniversary of the passing of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Quite the closing of an age, the death of those three. Dr. Peter Kreeft, WHO IS THE MAN, wrote a book in 1982 about a ficticious conversation between the deceased Kennedy, Lewis and Huxley.  Between Heaven and Hell is a short read (about 120 pages) and is well worth your time. Kreeft is an expert at making the difficult intelligable, much like Lewis, and does so delightfully through a dialogue among the orthodox christian, humanist christian and pantheist christian world views—Lewis, Kennedy and Huxley, respectively. It is a fast-paced conversation about the most important things—adding to "the Great Conversation." I read it a couple weeks ago, and I will be reading it again soon. Second, today is the feast day of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Ma...

I have been looking forward to the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary for a while. I’ve circled it on my calendar, dwelled on the mystery which it reveals and planned on fine drink for the feast. And what a feast it is! The Blessed Virgin is the exemplar follower of Christ, the pride of humanity and the greatest single created being in the universe. Her assumption, following Christ’s ascension, is a foreshadowing of all the saints of Christ’s Mystical Body. As a Protestant I never understood the idea behind Catholic feast days, veneration of the saints, and devotions to Mary. My question was not necessarily about its “intrinsic evil,” but more along the lines of “why bother?” For me, as a Protestant, Christ was the center and he alone. Everything else got in the way. Christ is the one mediator, not St. Thomas, St. Therese of Lisieux, certainly not the so called “Blessed Virgin Mary.” These stood in the way of Christ, hid him from view and shadowed his majesty as t...

In most places around the world, today is the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord. Growing up I never really understood the significance, or rather the fuller purpose, if you will, of the Ascension of Jesus.  I thought of it as a "my work here is done" moment. Of course in one vein, part of his work is done. He is no long the one who descended and dwelled among us. He was and is the Risen Lord. But his work as the one he ascended into all glory was just beginning and is an eternal mission, not fulfilled until he gathers all peoples and nations into one body. And nor has he left us. "I will be with you always, even to the end of the age." It was good that he ascended, so that the Spirit could descend and so we could enjoy him intimately through the Eucharist. In that most Blessed Sacrament, he gives of himself more abundantly than the manna that was given to the Israelites in the desert.  By his descent to this world through the Incarnation, he assumed us in...

I've been thinking about what it is that makes it all worth it. If someone said to me: "Jesus is God. My sins are forgiven, but so what? Who cares?" , how could I respond? This is not an unlikely proposition. It is a question I get asked from time to time in various forms. I think it to be a legitimate question. What compels us to do the will of God and tends us towards him? All my knowledge in apologetics, which talks about the truth, is deficient in answering this. It is challenging to articulate this convincingly through words unless we experience it. I think there is a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of Christianity and relegate the positive to the superfluous–the focus of Atonement for the Sinner as more important then the Resurrection. It is usually expressed in a manner similar to "The Father restored His Son to life to show us that the debt of our sin was satisfied." While this is partly true, there is so much more to the Resurrection. It...

So Pope Benedict XVI is resigning. He will be missed. He has fulfilled his post with great diligence and pastoral care. Interesting that his resignation and the next papal conclave to elect his successor will all take place during the Lenten season. I can't say that his monumental move to resign, something that hasn't been done since the Protestant Reformation, isn't wholly surprising. He's a man who has surprised everybody every step of the way. Stay tuned. I'm sure that everybody will be giving their expert input and sensationalizing this story: "I'm shocked, shocked I tell you." Anybody want to go to Rome in mid-March?

From my January 2013 Hall of Men toast “You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised. Your power is great, and your wisdom can’t be numbered. Humans wish to praise you—humans, a portion of your creation, who carry around their mortality, who carry around the testimony of their sin and that “God opposes the proud.” Even so, humans, a portion of your creation, wish to praise you. You excite us to pleasure in praising you, because you made us for yourself! Our hearts are restless till they find rest in you.” – Confessions, 1.1 William Jurgens said in his three-volume conglomeration on the writings of the Church Fathers that “if we were faced with the unlikely proposition of having to destroy completely either the works of Augustine or the works of all the other Fathers and Writers, I have little doubt that all the others would have to be sacrificed. Augustine must remain.” Name another man since the Apostles who has had more influence than St. Augustine. Men like Boethius, Anselm...

Today is the Feast Day of the St. Thomas Aquinas. If one's size reflected one's influence, St. Thomas is just about right. Known as the Angelic Doctor and the Universal Doctor, his importance to philosophy, theology and ethics reigns supreme. He's pretty awesome. And a super-smart brainiac. And mondo pious. He'd crush you if he sat on you. He'd crush your high hopes of dissent with his logic and make you feel silly. He was so saintly and humble, he was gifted a  glimpse of the Beatific Vision.  He was the most reasonable guy out there, and at the same time was a mystic. He believed in miracles, and when he saw them, he didn't think it was out of the ordinary. Why should it be? He was the intellectual genius that lived in elfland and believed that "a tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree" as another man of considerable intellect and girth once noted.  Although talking about his body of work would and does take many lifetimes, I'd like to...

So I've been studying Latin since May. Probably not surprising–'tis a geeky Catholic thing to do. It's at the same time exhilarating and depressing, and always hard work. For instance, since Latin is one of the most conjugated languages, the word "to chew" (mandūcō, mandūcāre, mandūcāvī, mandūcātum) has at least, sigh, 141 ways one can write the word, and this is not counting all the different ways to write indicative/subjunctive passive perfect, future perfect and pluperfect, which are sort of like the middle ground between a noun and a verb, which can cause headaches, tears and feelings of emptiness and can ultimately lead to mental breakdowns,  but I digressiō. Because Latin is so precise, words seem to have richer and clearer meanings. For instance, look at English. Many of it's more weightier words stem from a Latin origin, like salvation, justice, virtue and intelligence. The use of conjugations allows for so much precision that you can subtly change ...