We’re entering the Triodio, the period of contrition in the liturgical year during which hymns are sung which are very deep and powerful. The hymns of the Triodio reveal the dread mysteries and the conditions for eternal life. It’s a genuine and t...

Dear readers, it’s true that this year we were going to try to avoid referring to the time of the Triodio, because we’ve done so at length in the past, in some of our older articles, and it’s not good, it’s tedious, to return to the same subject s...

Self-love is egotism. We shouldn’t say: ‘I want to be all right; I want to go to paradise’, but we should feel this love for everybody. Do you understand? That’s humility. So if we live united with others, we’ll be blessed. We’ll be living in par...

When we talk about repentance, we don’t mean regretting our sins (that’s a psychological event which may well remain on this level and never become an event involving the Holy Spirit). Nor do we mean the sacrament of confession, at which we revea...

Mother’s Day today and children all over the world take the opportunity to remember and honour their mother. There are also a good number of cynics who view the adoption of the ‘feast’ as a phenomenon of naked commercialization, while there are ot...

This text is an abridgment of a sermon preached in 1626 by John Donne, Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London. Although it was actually delivered on Christmas Day, it seems equally appropriate to the Presentation*, or indeed any manifestation (epi...

Passions arise in all of us from time to time. Their appearance confirms our uncleanness, but doesn’t make us guilty. We’re guilty only if we give in willingly to any passion, in other words if we don’t consider it an enemy and don’t fight it det...

The feast of the Reception of the Lord (Candlemas, the Meeting of the Lord) which we celebrated recently is held exactly forty days after the Nativity. The name in Greek means ‘meeting’, but not in the sense of a mere encounter. It’s more in the w...

At the feast of the Reception of our Lord, the Church urges and encourages us to meet the spiritual challenges we face on a daily basis as part of our anxiety over the cares of life.

The entry of Christ, as a baby, into the Temple of Solomon, fort...

People of God, who’ve been convinced in their heart that God exists, fear nothing and nobody. This peace of God has enormous social repercussions. When we no longer feel envy, suspicion or fear, what reason is there for us not to be loving and un...