“Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear”

-St. Catherine of Siena

Come Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful,

And enkindle in them the fire of Thy Love.

Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created;

And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

 

O God Who didst teach the hearts of Thy faithful,

By the light of Thy Holy Spirit, grant us,

By the same Spirit, to be ever truly wise,

And to rejoice in His Holy comfort,

Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

What is the meaning of Veni Sancte Spiritus?

learn about the sequence hymn

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word, always doing the tiniest things right, and doing it for love.”

-St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Peace of Soul

from Peace of Soul by Venerable Fulton Sheen
“Once evil has come into the world, death is seen as a kind of blessing, for if there was no death, evil could go on forever. That is why God stationed an angel with a flaming sword at the Gate of Paradise, lest fallen man, eating of the tree of immortality, should immortalize his evil. But, because of death, evil cannot carry on its wickedness indefinitely.”

 
 
 

The Human Heart

from Preface to Religion by Venerable Fulton Sheen

“Look at your heart! It tells the story of why you were made. It is not perfect in shape and contour, like a Valentine heart. There seems to be a small piece missing out of the side of every human heart. That may be to symbolize a piece that was torn out of the Heart of Christ which embraced all humanity on the Cross.

I think the real meaning is, that when God made your human heart, He found it so good and so lovable that He kept a small sample of it in heaven. He sent the rest of it into this world to enjoy His gifts, and to use them as stepping stones back to Him, but to be ever mindful that you can never love anything in this world with your whole heart because you have not a whole heart with which to love. In order to love anyone with your whole heart, in order to be really peaceful, in order to be really whole-hearted, you must go back again to God to recover the piece He has been keeping for you for all eternity!”

 

The Annunciation

begin with reflections on the first Joyful Mystery

 

 

“I came not to bring peace, but the sword.”

(Matt 10:34)

“We’ve forgotten that we’re in a combat. We are in genuine combat. When our first parents were driven out of the garden of Paradise, God stationed an angel with a flaming sword, a two-edged sword that turned this way and that. Why? To keep our first parents from going back to eat of the Tree of Life and thus immortalize their evil. And the only way we can ever get back again into paradise is by having that sword run into us.

It’s flaming because it’s love. It’s two-edged because it cuts, and it penetrates. It’s not the sword that’s thrust outward to hack off the ear of the servant of the high priest as Peter did. It’s the sword that’s thrust inward to cut out all of our seven pallbearers of the soul, the pride and covetousness, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth.”

 

 

Knowledge & Love

from The Last of the Fathers: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Encyclical Letter ‘Doctor Mellifluus’ by Thomas Merton

“Saint Bernard, the Doctor of Mystical Love, must necessarily be a defender of truth and of learning. God Himself is wisdom. Therefore He can only be loved fittingly if He is loved wisely. Neglect of knowledge leads love into error, and the enemy of souls has no more efficacious way of drawing God’s love out of our hearts, Saint Bernard says, than by inducing us to seek Him without the light of intelligence.”

 

“The Eucharist is so essential to our one-ness with Christ that as soon as Our Lord announced It in the Gospel, It began to be the test of the fidelity of His followers. First, He lost the masses, for it was too hard a saying and they no longer followed Him. Secondly, He lost some of His disciples: “They walked with Him no more.” Third, it split His apostolic band, for Judas is here announced as the betrayer.”

-Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Treasure in Clay)

The Eternal Christ Through the Centuries

from The Rock Plunged into Eternity by Venerable Fulton Sheen

 

“Do you really believe that this Divine Truth would come to this earth, speak a few words, and allow them to be wafted away by a Galilean breeze?

It is absurd to believe that He Who wrote only once in His Life, and that was in the sands, and Who never told anyone to write, should have intended that His Truth should be available only and exclusively in a few memoranda that were written down by a few followers over twenty years after His death, and were never gathered together in their approved form until three centuries later?

Grant that they are inspired and revealed, and I believe it and confess it and read those writings daily; but I still say it is unthinkable that these books which were not written until His Mystical Body was already spread throughout the whole Roman Empire, should be His only way of communicating Truth.

If He did not take some effective guarantee to preserve His Truth, which was so sacred that He died for it, then Truth did not matter to Him. If He could not prolong His Truth, up to this hour, then He is not God. Either that infallible Truth of Jesus Christ is living now, available now, or He is not God. Our problem is to find that infallible Divine Truth. Come, O Christ, not with a dead Truth, but with a living, breathing, speaking Truth which is the Truth of God to lead the world from darkness into the light. Come with it, even though You have to use human nature to communicate it now as You did then.”

 

On Suffering

Reading & Resources

How to Pray the Rosary

 

CCE Lessons & Notes

 

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.