As we begin Lent on this Ash Wednesday, may we repent and live the holy lives for Christ He has called us to live… Continue reading LENT: MEMENTO MORI – REMEMBER THOU ART DUST AND YOU WILL DIE
Strangely or not, St. Valentine’s Day, the day we think about love and pleasant feelings actually began in the death of this saint – for marrying Christians! Continue reading ST. VALENTINE: LOVE , MARRIAGE, AND DEATH
Candlemas was an especially important day to G. K. Chesterton. He marked it by writing an entire volume of poems titled The Queen of the Seven Swords. In it he makes specific reference to the day in his poem, The Paradox Continue reading CANDLEMAS!
“A saint is long past any desire for distinction; he is the only sort of superior man who has never been a superior person.” Continue reading FEAST OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
The fake food is for you and me and its being sold as “noble” propaganda. They talk about “protecting the planet” but not for us. Continue reading THE REAL LIFE ON THE LAND
Through these past three Christmases. What epiphanies, apart from the Incarnation of God, have come to light? Continue reading CHRISTMAS, EPIPHANY AND CHESTERTON’S SHOP OF GHOSTS
To discover Theophany is, like Chesterton, to walk backwards through history to the place from which Christmas came. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: THEOPHANY: The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord!
To honor Christmas in our hearts and keep it throughout the year for a dark world and the weary people yet in it who are looking for some light of hope to begin again. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: “TO KEEP IT ALL THE YEAR”
Our Christmas journey ends in the Epiphany, but never comes to an end for each Christian in their faith journey. It is a satisfying mystery within the Great Mystery of the Church! Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: EPIPHANY! (traditional)
As we continue our journey to Epiphany what has God revealed to us? To what wonderful and terrible gift has he opened our eyes and heart? Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: JOURNEY TO EPIPHANY CONTINUES
Our New Year’s resolutions must include a change in one’s soul. The person we were before the journey must not be the same person we become after the journey. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: JOURNEY TO EPIPHANY – Searching for the King of Kings
During Christmas, we are brought to this realization in all the Christmas controversies – The most holy name of Jesus is the mystery of the divine personality. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF THE MOST HOLY NAME OF JESUS
When someone is sick we call a doctor. What Doctor of the Church would you call on to heal her? In the first century, in the late 300s, two men were called upon to heal the Church of one of the biggest heresies to the cornerstone of her belief – the Arian heresy against the Trinity. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: MEMORIAL OF STS. BASIL AND GREGORY
How perfect that we welcome the New Year with the blessing of our Mother, the Mother of God! Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE MOTHER OF GOD
The first “peace-time” pope in the reign of Constantine, St. Sylvester took part in two very important negotiations: the Arian heresy and the Council of Nicaea. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF ST SYLVESTER
“The very trinity of the Divine Nature that draws our hearts to the Trinity of the Holy Family…such turn God into a Holy Family” – G.K. Chesterton Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY (and their return from Egypt)
The Church has stood against the State when the State has tried to supersede her relative authority under God in this world. In standing up to evil and obeying God first, it calls on us all to remember Peter’s words in Acts 5:29 Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST DAY OF ST THOMAS BECKET and THE FLIGHT TO EGYPT
Nothing could be more bitterly tragic than the butchery of the children of Bethlehem at the moment of the Christ child’s birth and the salvation of the world it portends. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: FEAST OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS
We can dream of White Christmases as well as a Heaven and a Kingdom, finally with “no more death’[a] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” We don’t have to understand everything to believe and trust God that such things that are beyond our control are possible. Men do not go mad by dreaming. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: ST.JOHN’S DAY
Why was Stephen martyred? Because he told the truth and didn’t hide it to those who needed to hear it because their feelings might get hurt and they might get angry. Continue reading CHRISTMASTIDE: ST.STEPHEN’S DAY
Come to the house of Christmas and God bless us everyone! Continue reading CHRISTUS NATUS EST!
We need not wander more but enter with our gift;
Our gift of finest gold,
Gold that was never bought nor sold; Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: BUT ENTER WITH OUR GIFT
God created a universe and He has created a way for all men in that universe to be redeemed! Something science will never be able to accomplish no matter how far it is allowed to progress. And as a dying world watches, it is confounded by the mere servants of God – you and me – who continue to tell them why even as they celebrate Christmas. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: BORN AMONG MIRACLES TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO
This is the gift that God gives each of us at Christmas time and upon our baptism and acceptance into the Church! We are orphans no longer! Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: YOU ARE NO LONGER AN ORPHAN
Are we grateful to God, as was Chesterton, that on our worst days, the power to do something about our situation is beyond us? Why might that be? Read to the end and see the answer in Chesterton’s “A Prayer in Darkness” Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: SET BEYOND MY POWER
To be invited to shine as a light to the world, even at the moment of our own pain, is one of the riddles of the Gospel of Christ and a miracle of God. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: TO SHINE UPON EVERYONE INDIFFERENTLY
Hope defends the significance of all the old simple but wonderful constructs of God – of sun and moon, day and night, warm homes and hot meals and mothers and fathers and families and a God who loves us and watches over us. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: DEFENDING THE GOODNESS OF THINGS CREATED WITH HOPE
It is a question between mysticism and madness. For mysticism, and mysticism alone, has kept men sane from the beginning of the world. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: BETWEEN MYSTICISM AND MADNESS
The birthday of our King is coming! Are you excited yet? It’s just a little over a week away! And it gives every man the chance to be born again! To become the child-like person Christ was telling us we have to be to enter the Kingdom with Him. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: WE ARE ALL BORN AGAIN AT CHRISTMAS!
When he considers the ‘ideal postman’ or the ‘ideal grocer’ or the ‘ideal plumber’, rather than excusing us some politically lower sink of living, Chesterton is calling us to see the heroic virtue in the everyday work and occupations of real men and women, living humbly. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: THE HEROIC VIRTUE OF HUMILITY
The third Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, brings us into rejoicing with God’s philosophy of light! Is our shining strong enough to bring light to the ever growing darkness? Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: REJOICING IN GOD’s PHILOSOPHY OF LIGHT
Chesterton believed that the absence from modern life of both the higher and lower forms of faith was largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: THE NEED FOR FAITH, HILARITY, AND TURNIPS
The arguments of the world are all alike in waging with secular weapons what is still really a spiritual war. We are called as Soldiers of Christ to fight back with our spiritual weapons. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: A SPIRITUAL WAR
This reflective time of Advent teaches us that religion is the practice of our faith. It is the action behind our profession that we believe Christ so that others can believe us about Christ. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: A CRASH OF BRASS
G. K. Chesterton had a life long love of St. Nicholas, whom he called Santa Claus, after the Dutch fashion which soon became the ubiquitous moniker for St, Nicholas in the West. In fact, he confessed as he got older, Santa Claus became more not less real to him. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: THE FEAST OF SAINT NICHOLAS
The old song says: “We need a little Christmas. Right this very minute!” But God is telling us that we need a little trust and patience. Child-like trust and the paradox of adult patience. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: GUARDING THE QUITE CLEAR BLACK LINE
May you and I receive the spiritual gifts of peace and comfort from our loving and merciful Lord and Savior that comes with the freedom of repentance! Peace be with you! Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: SECOND SUNDAY – WITHOUT REFERENCE TO FORM
The protection against madness is your joy. Don’t ever lose it. Most people who have gone mad have lost their joy. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: WONDER, JOY, MYSTERY AND SANITY
None of our present problems, none of the problems to come are without an answer – and it is found on the altar of Christ. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: ON A THOUSAND ALTARS
Those that leave love, that leave us, that leave God, always create sorrow for those they leave. But in that pain, in order for love to succeed and to be sincere, we must hate what is bad and remain true to God and the truth. That is the ultimate paradox of love and loss we face in this life journey on earth to heaven, in this Advent journey to Christ now. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: LOSS ALONG THE WAY
In this Advent, our impelling power to journey is the love of God, no matter what may come. Because we know where it leads. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: TO JOURNEY DELIBERATELY
Contra mundo. It means “against the world”. And that is what the Christian brotherhood is supposed to be so that we can in love and charity be the salt of the earth and the light of the world in its darkness. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: CONTRA MUNDO
As we become introspective, we see things along this new journey over familiar ground that we may have missed. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: LOOK AGAIN
We begin our journey with gratitude from Thanksgiving and the first stop in our journey is lit with the candle for hope on our way to the wonder that is the birth of Christ. Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT: FIRST SUNDAY
“Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.” Continue reading A Hymn of Thanksgiving
Please SIGN UP to receive our daily Chesterton Advent Calendar Continue reading A CHESTERTON ADVENT
a man is not a man without his body, just as he is not a man without his soul. Continue reading All Souls Day
Today the Church honors all those who are with God, the innumerable men and women, the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1-3) who chose fidelity to Christ Continue reading All Saints Day
Reforming the Line 