MIRACULOUS APPEARANCES!
Chesterton believed in miracles himself and wrote much about them in several works, one of which, Orthodoxy, explained why he believed in them. Continue reading MIRACULOUS APPEARANCES!
Eastertide: Divine Mercy – Immortality is the great holiday…
Another Eastertide (Octave) has come to a close with the Sunday of Divine Mercy. But the Easter Season continues! Christ is still risen! Hallelujah! Continue reading Eastertide: Divine Mercy – Immortality is the great holiday…
Eastertide: In Humility – The Cosmos begins to know its place…
When once a god is admitted, even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the second place. When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter. Continue reading Eastertide: In Humility – The Cosmos begins to know its place…
Eastertide – Strong enough to exult in monotony : entering the Kingdom of Heaven
There would be peace if everyone understood the point Jesus was making about little children, what God is going to do to the world and what heaven is really like. Continue reading Eastertide – Strong enough to exult in monotony : entering the Kingdom of Heaven
Eastertide – Because death has been defeated…
As Chesterton reminds us, what we have in this Eastertide is not a reminder of Spring coming again, but an actual reminder of the reversal of death for all time! Continue reading Eastertide – Because death has been defeated…
Eastertide – Nothing less can raise us from the dead…
we have to face the awful exaltation of that truth. I mean the truth that Resurrection is of faith and not of any false analogy from the senses or the seasons. Continue reading Eastertide – Nothing less can raise us from the dead…
Eastertide – A God Who Knew The Way Out Of The Grave…
“His command to us “to preach the good news to all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations” ( Matt 24:14) is all about assuring such ones that we do indeed worship a God who knows the way out of their dilemma because he knows the way out of the grave!” Continue reading Eastertide – A God Who Knew The Way Out Of The Grave…
Eastertide – The peculiar chivalry of Christendom…
It is this splendour of the hopeless hope; sometimes called the forlorn hope, which has made the peculiar chivalry of Christendom, which has given to us alone the true idea of romance Continue reading Eastertide – The peculiar chivalry of Christendom…
Holy Week: Easter Sunday – What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation…
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! For, as Chesterton observed, “we have a God who knew the way out of the grave!” Continue reading Holy Week: Easter Sunday – What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation…
Holy Week: Holy Saturday – Guarded by the authority of the Caesars…
As we enter the Great Silence, begun at the end of Good Friday when Christ was laid in the tomb, we remember that all creation was holding its breath during that time. Waiting. Continue reading Holy Week: Holy Saturday – Guarded by the authority of the Caesars…
Holy Week: Good Friday – The best things in the world that are at their worst…
A man can have a change of mind and heart, a metanoia, but he needs a Savior to change his spirit. Otherwise, the other conclusion is an inevitable and very dark one. The Cross was and is the only way out of this dilemma. Continue reading Holy Week: Good Friday – The best things in the world that are at their worst…
Holy Week: Maundy Thursday – An object of faith…
On this Holy Thursday, this Maunday Thursday, we remember two things: One, as Chesterton’s quote tells us, is an object of faith that we agree to believe in and the other is a commandment demonstrating a work of faith. Continue reading Holy Week: Maundy Thursday – An object of faith…
Holy Week: Holy Wednesday – Judas with the bag…
We are wise not to forget that this simple act of betrayal was accomplished merely with trust, a kiss, and a money deal. The same features of business transactions most of us use everyday, although we might replace the kiss with a handshake. Continue reading Holy Week: Holy Wednesday – Judas with the bag…
Holy Week: Holy Tuesday – The traitor is always a friend…
The difference between how betrayal was seen in Chesterton’s day when the name ‘Judas’ was still used as a public epitaph and ours is telling. It is reminding us that the atmosphere has changed. Continue reading Holy Week: Holy Tuesday – The traitor is always a friend…
Holy Week: Holy Monday – A Deadly Ultimatum to the World
In this story of Holy Monday, that is the point being illustrated by Judas and Mary. Judas is overlooked and given too much trust while Mary is overly suspicioned and not given a fair assessment of character. Continue reading Holy Week: Holy Monday – A Deadly Ultimatum to the World
Lent/Holy Week: Palm Sunday
For in one week the same crowd who hailed him with palm leaves at his feet, became a mob at the end of the week on Good Friday, and called for his death on the Cross in fulfillment of scripture. It is a lesson for all of us about the costs of loyalty and constancy and resisting political fear for what is true. Continue reading Lent/Holy Week: Palm Sunday
A Season of Lent: Spiritual Sight
God give us spiritual sight in order to know the truth. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Spiritual Sight
A Season of Lent: THE ANNUNCIATION
When he was 16 years old, even before he became Catholic, the young Chesterton wrote a poetic devotion to Mary Continue reading A Season of Lent: THE ANNUNCIATION
A Season of Lent: Renewed By Faith In A Faithless World
Holy Week is getting nearer, just as in our daily lives, Christ’s return is getting nearer. Truly then all things will be made new by our faith in Christ. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Renewed By Faith In A Faithless World
A Season of Lent: Humble and Persevering Prayer – the Answer To Hopelessness
The saints before us learned that persevering prayer is the place of rejoicing – even in tears – and the most confident of places to be when our confidence is in the Lord alone. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Humble and Persevering Prayer – the Answer To Hopelessness
A Season of Lent: Forgiveness and Healing – How It Sets Us Free
Chesterton understood that real repentance must, like love, be sincere. It’s the other side of the real and lasting forgiveness which heals. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Forgiveness and Healing – How It Sets Us Free
A Season of Lent: The Wrath of the Lamb – a Christian Paradox
He held that eternal innocence to be an actual and even an awful thing. He would not have seen anything comic, any more than the Christian Evangelist saw anything comic, in talking about the Wrath of the Lamb. Continue reading A Season of Lent: The Wrath of the Lamb – a Christian Paradox
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit!
While this is often a day of green beer and celebrations, it was not always so. The life of Patrick teaches us the exact opposite. It was a life of submission to the Christ. It was a life of courage and forgiveness lived out by coming back to Ireland, from his native England, to invite his former captors to taste and accept the freedom of Christ. Continue reading Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit!
A Season of Lent: Charity – Forgiveness That Includes Justice As We Grow
God in his wisdom, as the great Teacher, brings us to full reconciliation in steps of expectation. His love when we are unlovable is magnanimous; it covers all that we cannot. But as we grow in Christian maturity and responsibility, there are expectations, between God and us and between we as brothers. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Charity – Forgiveness That Includes Justice As We Grow
A Season of Lent: Almsgiving, the call to Christian charity
Today Chesterton helps us look at how Christ wants to involve us in actually looking at those in need with our own eyes, helping them with our own hands, giving to them what we give to ourselves. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Almsgiving, the call to Christian charity
A Season of Lent: Human Charity vs. Christian Charity
Chesterton uses the character of Father Brown to explain why we must never conventionalize sin and make cheap the mercy and magnificence of forgiveness nor refuse it to the truly penitent. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Human Charity vs. Christian Charity
A Season of Lent: Obedience to the State But Not Worship of the State
We may be put in the position of giving up some things we consider necessities in order to preserve more important things necessary to our everlasting life. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Obedience to the State But Not Worship of the State
A Season of Lent: On Self Government
If we are to consider the proposition of self-government, what enemies, both within and without, do we need to be aware of? What will our battle plan look like when attacked? What if we are spiritually attacked? What choices will we make to defend our spirituality? Continue reading A Season of Lent: On Self Government
A Season of Lent: Suffering For Christ
We are not asked to do anything that Christ has not done himself first. Suffering is not pointless. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Suffering For Christ
A Season of Lent: Healing
our main conclusion is that it is a fundamental point of view, a philosophy or religion which is needed, and not any change in habit or social routine Continue reading A Season of Lent: Healing
A Season of Lent: Trusting and Yielding To God In Love
Every Age asks the question: Who will you worship? God or Man? And Every Age has its lovers of God. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Trusting and Yielding To God In Love
A Season of Lent: Responding To Correction With Patience and Love
the world has no standards by which to correct course and return to sanity. But the Church does Continue reading A Season of Lent: Responding To Correction With Patience and Love
A Season of Lent: Cost of Discipleship
The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Cost of Discipleship
A Season of Lent: Faith, Fatherhood and Righteousness
In this year of St. Joseph, it is only right that we remember the help he gives us during Lent. Fathers are to set the example of faith and righteous obedience to God for us in the family. It is a strange strength God gives a man. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Faith, Fatherhood and Righteousness
A Season of Lent: The Promise of Restoration
There is renewal of the soul but the body feels an energy as well from what the soul is given. Imagine, now, all things eventually and completely being made new again – even ourselves! Well that is the eventual out come of every thing we exercise in faith now. As Chesterton points out, “Immortality is the great holiday”! Continue reading A Season of Lent: The Promise of Restoration
A Season of Lent: Rejected and Condemned
The desire to atone. The misplaced way to do it. It’s why there are mobs. It’s what Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery is based on: we know, from the image of God inside us, that something is wrong and it must be atoned. But how? Continue reading A Season of Lent: Rejected and Condemned
A Season of Lent: Saying Yes To God’s Will
It is the glory of this fiat of Mary allowing God to be made flesh that withstands all blasphemy in order to triumph every time in every circumstance. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Saying Yes To God’s Will
A Season of Lent: Loving Our Enemies
He makes a curious distinction: to love an enemy is to want his highest good, treating him with the courtesy and respect we would want while not claiming him as a close associate. We don’t do as our enemy does, we act better toward him. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Loving Our Enemies
A Season of Lent: On Prayer
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry.
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die; Continue reading A Season of Lent: On Prayer
A Season of Lent: On Mercy
The children were partly dissatisfied with it because it did not end with a Day of Judgment; because it was never revealed to the hero and heroine that the dog had been faithful and the cat faithless. Continue reading A Season of Lent: On Mercy
A Season of Lent: Sorrow to Wholeness
As her prayer ends, Esther recognizes a strength that Chesterton writes about that identifies the Christian from the Unbeliever: “Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian…joy is central and sorrow is peripheral” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy). Continue reading A Season of Lent: Sorrow to Wholeness
A Season of Lent: Giving God Our Best
Today’s Lenten reflection is a difficult one but also an encouraging thought. Chesterton confronts us all about what defines Christianity. He does so by highlighting what Christ Himself has warned us: that Christianity is difficult, that grace as its dilute meaning has come to be understood in our day, is missing the entire point James is making about faith and works. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Giving God Our Best
A Season of Lent: Trusting in Men and Riches
Indeed they daily create more fear and promise one thing about help with their words but reality is showing average citizens all of this to be a lie. This is what happens when people put their trust in human beings to save them. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Trusting in Men and Riches
A Season of Lent: Changing Our Mind
“Chesterton changed his mind. He admitted he was a fool and a joke. He had professed all the latest ideas. But the one thing he was sure was most wrong, ended up being right ” – Kevin De Young. This is how Chesterton’s great work, “Orthodoxy” begins: with a repentance, a change of his mind. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Changing Our Mind
A Season of Lent: Prophets, Saints, and the World
Every worshipper of God, God means to become a saint. And when we preach the entirety of the Good News to those in the world, in its basic sense, we are its prophets. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Prophets, Saints, and the World
A Season of Lent : On Humility
Humility is the mother of giants. Continue reading A Season of Lent : On Humility
A Season of Lent: On Repentance
As we begin Lent by focusing on the essentials of fasting and almsgiving, may we also work towards repentance and live the holy lives for Christ He has called us to live… Continue reading A Season of Lent: On Repentance
A Season of Lent: Almsgiving
In their talk about Thomas Becket and such saints and heroes they make soap more important than soul; they reject godliness whenever it is not cleanliness. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Almsgiving
A Season of Lent: Fasting
He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. Continue reading A Season of Lent: Fasting
LOVE , MARRIAGE, AND DEATH
Strangely or not, St. Valentine’s Day, the day we think about love and pleasant feelings also began in the death of this saint – for marrying Christians! Continue reading LOVE , MARRIAGE, AND DEATH
