St Margaret Mary lived in France in the seventeenth century, and it is to her that we owe the present day devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She received many revelations from Our Lord, but in 1675 she received twelve promises made to her and to those who were truly devoted to His Sacred […]
We quote here the famous prayer of St Teresa: ‘Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices’. These are words we can certainly make our own in prayer, and we may like to pray them […]
St Callistus is revered throughout the world for his exercise of mercy towards sinners who had publicly repented; he also established the discipline of the Sacrament of Penance, and provided for the burial of martyrs in the catacombs of Rome. He died in 222 or 223 and is venerated as the patron saint of those […]
Today is also the Optional Memoria of St Edward the Confessor, the last but one Anglo-Saxon King of England. It was he who established Westminster Abbey, and his shrine is still a place of pilgrimage. Pope Benedict prayed there during his Apostolic Visit to our country in 2010. In the challenges of our own time, […]
From today’s Gospel reading, from St Luke: ‘give for alms those things which are within …’. What might this mean? The ‘spiritual works of mercy’ come to mind. These are: to instruct the ignorant; to counsel the doubtful; to admonish the sinner; to bear wrongs patiently; to forgive offences willingly; to comfort the afflicted; and […]
Securely held, but upside down … this is what the image below conveys. It is often this way in our spiritual lives – all of life is upside down, and we with it, but at the same time, our heavenly Father has us safely held. St Thérèse of Lisieux wrote, paraphrasing St John of the […]
Today’s Old Testament reading is from the Book of Wisdom, and gives us an insight into King Solomon’s high regard for the gift of Holy Wisdom: ‘Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. I preferred her to sceptres and thrones, and I […]
St John Henry Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010, in Birmingham, and canonised by Pope Francis on 13 October 2019. Here is part of his short article on ‘A Short Road to Perfection’, written on September 27, 1856: ‘He, then, is perfect who does the work of the day perfectly, and […]
These words conclude our Old Testament reading for today, from the prophet Joel: ‘“Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your heart” …’ Conversion of life is one of the cornerstones of Benedictine spirituality. It means that, at all times and in all circumstances, our whole being should be turned towards the Lord, […]
Pope St John Paul II said in 2002: ‘The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, […]