God Reveals Only to Little Ones

Because no man through his native power has ever seen God, because no man of himself can suspect any but a natural presence of God in his creation, it follows that no man can either attain or understand or unfold a gratuitous presence except in so far as he draws his light from divine revelation. Speculative theology is good, but speculative theology is not philosophy. It may not theorize in a vacuum. If we are to speculate on the indwelling Trinity living and loving in the depths of our beings, we must first sit humbly with Mary at the feet of the Word and listen to his word. The listening must be observant, but it must also be contemplative and humble, since the Father does not reveal these things to the proud and the crafty but only too little ones.

THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. God Dwells Within Us

Hell

Neither Holy Scripture nor the Church’s Tradition of faith asserts with certainty of any man that he is actually in hell. Hell is always held before our eyes as a real possibility, one connected with the offer of conversion and life.

The Church’s Confession of Faith: A Catholic Catechism For Adults 

The Source of All Bliss and All Joy

In the Trinity, the ultimate depths of the real and the whole mystery of existence are revealed to us. The Trinity is the principal and the origin of creation and redemption. Ultimately all things are borne back to it in the mystery of worship and adoration. Above all else, it is what gives substance to all things: everything else flows from it or tends toward it. In the light of the Trinity, we discover our true selves. For the essential conversion is the one that leads us from the visible world with its external temptations to the invisible world which is at once supremely real, since it constitutes the ultimate basis of all reality, and supremely holy and admirable, since it is the source of all bliss and all joy.

JEAN DANIELOU, SJ God’s Life In Us

The Lord’s Love For Us

If only we really knew Jesus we would not be so concerned with putting on a good show and of how others see us. Instead of concealing our insecurities, fears, secret failings even from ourselves, we would accept the reality that we are, tranquil in the certainty that our Lord looks on us with infinite compassion and love.

RUTH BURROWS, OCD Love Unknown

A Sanctuary In Your Heart

This is what often hinders souls of good will from making progress in prayer. In the morning, they make their prayer well, they receive Our Lord in Holy Communion and are very united to him; then they leave the choir, they go for breakfast, they take up their work; they cast a little glance here, they say a word there, and they lose their recollection. And thus during the whole day, they advance and they fall back. You must accustom yourself to make a little sanctuary in your heart where you will always find Our Lord even in the midst of occupations and distractions; and then as soon as you are alone, as soon as you have a few minutes a fire shall flame out.

BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION  

Meditation

By meditation I penetrate the innermost ground of my life, seek the full understanding of God's will for me, of God's mercy to me, of my absolute dependence upon Him. But this penetration must be authentic. It must be something genuinely lived by me.

THOMAS MERTON 

The Intercession of the Saints

Prayer is offered to a person in two ways: first, as to be fulfilled by him, secondly, as to be obtained through him. On the first way we offer prayer to God alone, since all our prayers ought to be directed to the acquisition of grace and glory, which God alone gives….

But in the second way we pray to the saints, whether angels or men, not that God may through them know our petitions, but that our prayers may be effective through their prayers and merits. Hence it is written that "the smoke of the incense”—namely, "the prayers of the saints”—"rose before God." This is also clear from the very style employed by the church in praying: since we beseech the blessed Trinity "to have mercy on us," while we ask any of the saints "to pray for us.”

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Summa Theologiae 

Science and Mysticism

Science alone cannot discover Christ. But Christ satisfies the yearnings that are born in our hearts in the school of science… Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism.

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN My Universe, 1924, IX, 83

Prayer and Desire

We must learn how to request in prayer, not what we desire, but what God desires. Nevertheless prayer must proceed from a real desire: let it be the desire to be more Christian. To pray to be more Christian means that we are praying to be detached from our own selves.

CHARLES NICOLET, SJ

The Beginning of Love

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

THOMAS MERTON

The Slow Work of God

"Above all trust in the slow work of God. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete." 

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

Baptism of the Lord

Christ is baptized, not to be made holy by the water, but to make the water holy, and by his cleansing to purify the waters which he touched.

ST. MAXIMUS OF TURIN

Reality and Our Vocation

"We have only to see how that which makes up the reality of our lives relates to our vocation; we have only to hear the call God makes to us to work with him. Quite often it is not a matter of doing something different, but doing it differently."

JEAN DANIELOU

The Ten Commandments

“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.”

G.K. CHESTERTON – Illustrated London News, Jan. 3, 1920

Christ’s Ministries

Christ was a porter when he opened the door of the ark and closed it again [see Genesis 7:16]. He was a gravedigger when he called fourth Lazarus, already stinking, out of the tomb on the fourth day [see John 11:43-44]. He was a lector when he opened up to the ears of the people the book of the prophet Isaiah in the midst of the synagogue and read, and when he had finished, handed it back to the minister [see Luke 4:16-20]. He was a subdeacon when he poured water into a basin and of his own accord humbly washed the feet of the disciples [see John 13:15]. He was a deacon when he blessed the chalice and gave it to his apostles to drink [see Matthew 26:27-28]. He was a presbyter when he blessed the bread and gave it to them in the same way [see Matthew 26:26]. He was a bishop when, as one having power, he taught the people in the temple about the kingdom of God [see John 7:14].

ANONYMOUS Chronicon Palatinum (6th century)

Serious Sins and Humility

I run the risk of making a blunder, but I will say it; the Lord loves humility so much that, sometimes, he permits serious sins. Why? In order that those committing these sins may, after repenting, remain humble. One does not feel inclined to think oneself half a saint, half an angel, when one has committed serious faults.

POPE JOHN PAUL I L’Osservatore Romano, Sept. 14, 1978 

Failures in Small Matters

The dispensation of Almighty God is large. It often happens that those to whom he grants the greater goods are denied the lesser, so that their minds might always have something with which to reproach themselves. Hence, although they long to be perfect, it is not possible for them. They work hard in the areas where they have not been given the gift, and their labor achieves no result. In consequence, they are less likely to have a high opinion of themselves in the areas in which they have been gifted. Because they are not able to be victorious over small vices and excesses, they learn that the greater goods do not derive from themselves.

SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT Dialogues

Homily — Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

 Jan. 1, 2025 Galations 4:4-7 Luke 2:16-21

       Today, the first day of the calendar year, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Mother of God.  This solemn feast is the Octave Day of  Christmas—Christmas, the  day we celebrate Mary's giving birth to Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man.  The Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, was sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and to cause her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own.(CCC)  Therefore Mary is rightly called the Mother of God since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, who is God himself (CCC).  This title “Mother of God” has been an explicit part of the belief of the Church since about the second century--probably beginning with St. Hippolytus of Rome, who seems to have formulated the title “Mother of God” as a legitimate development of the titles “Mother of my Lord” and “Mother of Jesus” found in the Gospels.  The passage we heard from St. Paul's letter to the Galations, “God sent his Son, born of a woman...” was crucial in the development.  Crucial, also, to our understanding of her Motherhood of God is that Holy Mary, full of grace,  was “more than a merely passive instrument of God. The Incarnation of God took place through her active consent as well.” (Y-C)  As St. Thomas Aquinas writes, “She uttered her 'Yes' (Be it done unto me according to thy word.) in the name of all human nature.” The conception, bearing and birth of Christ Jesus was the fruit of a mutual covenant of love between God and Mary, a covenant that was never broken and now reaches to eternity.

       When we think of Mary as the Mother of God, we might tend to think of her as bearing and raising Jesus when he was an infant and toddler and young boy, but having not much else of an influence on him as he matured. St. Luke's gospel has a narrative that contradicts such an idea.  It tells us that Jesus went down to Nazareth with his parents,  that he was obedient to them, that Mary kept all these things in her heart, and that Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man. (Luke 2:51-52)  We all cherish the wise things and sayings that our own mothers taught us. My mother was always quoting her version of the Book of Proverbs: As you sow, so shall you reap.  Well, so it seems, Jesus also cherished his mother's wisdom.  In Chapter 1 of Luke we read Mary's magnificent song of praise to God called, the Magnificat, after its opening word in Latin.  In it Mary praises God with regard to  her own impending giving of birth to Jesus, the Son of God.  Mary, the Bride of the Holy Spirit, rhapsodizes that her soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her savior, just as in Luke 10 her Son Jesus rejoices in the Holy Spirit and gives praise to his Father. This is the magnificat, the hymn of praise to the heavenly Father, by her Son.  In hers, Mary is elated that God lifts up the lowly—the lowly and humble of the land (such as herself)--and casts down the great and mighty from their self-exalting thrones.  Just so is Jesus rejoicing in the Spirit that the mysteries are hidden from the wise and learned, but are revealed to the childlike.  We can coin a phrase based on another and say, “Like Mother, like Son.” Mary's canticle of praise epitomizes the entire Gospel that her Son will be teaching: in its turning of all worldly conceptions on their heads: the conceptions of rich over the poor, of the sophisticates over the simple, the powerful over the weak, the self-righteous over sinners.  These wordly conceptions are all turned upside down in the proclamation of the Good News by Jesus.  Jesus Christ our God and Savior is indeed the son of Mary, who is also our mother. 

     In today's gospel pericope we see that Mary is not only the Mother of Jesus, God and Savior, but is also the Mother of all who will be saved through him.  On Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, Mother Mary is surrounded by the Apostle shepherds who in the power of the Holy Spirit will bring the saving gospel to all people by radiating out from Mary's presence.  We see a foreshadowing of this in the stable scene today where Mother Mary and Joseph and Jesus are surrounded by the shepherds of Bethlehem who will go forth from them on the birthday of Jesus with the  announcement of the new born Savior, Christ the Lord.  And Mary and Joseph and Jesus remain with us.  In heaven they are always praying to incorporate us more and more into the Holy Family that is the Church.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.  From the cross,  Jesus explicity gives his mother to us all through the person of St. John when Jesus says to him, “Behold your Mother.”  As an aside, remember, also, when you are in need: “Go to Joseph!”--the husband of Mary.

        Yes, Mary, Mother of God,  is our mother, and, mirabile dictu, WE are also the mother of God.  Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my mother.”  I think this means that the more our lives conform to those of Jesus and Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, the more each of us helps to give birth and nourish the body of Christ that is the Church which exists for the salvation of all people.   We are called by God in Jesus and Mary to surrender to God's will as did each of them: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to your word,” Mary says to the Father through the Angel of the Annunciation.  Jesus prays like his Mother during his agony in the Garden saying, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; still, not my will but yours be done.”  Like Mother, like Son. We are all called to this same surrender to God's holy will.

       Mary gave of her own body and blood to Jesus as he was formed in her womb.  She is, therefore, the Mother of the Eucharist, the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. Now, in Holy Communion, Jesus will give us of his own glorified body and blood which he received from Mary.  The Word and Eucharist together of this celebration is the seed of the Holy Spirit placed in the womb of our hearts as it is proclaimed and given to us, and we receive it with the word “Amen” spoken in faith, hope and love.  May we all together give birth to Christ and bear Christ into our world.  It would be the greatest blessing of this new year, 2025, which Pope Francis has designated “The Holy Year of Hope.”

Mary Undoing Eve

Just as Eve was led astray by the word of an angel...so did the Virgin Mary by the word of an angel receive the glad tidings that she should bear God, through obedience to his word. If the former disobeyed God, the latter was persuaded to obey God and thus became Eve's advocate. Just as the human race was subjected to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin; the scales were rebalanced when a virginal obedience redressed a virginal disobedience. The coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, and the bonds that firmly bound us to death were cut.

ST. IRENAEUS Against Heresies