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“Catholics, start reading the Bible!”: An interview with Fr. Timothy Peters
Fr. Timothy Peters, S.T.D., is an assistant professor of biblical studies at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, which serves the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as well as other dioceses, including the Diocese of Orange, for which he was ordained a priest in 2003. ... Read more -
Sts. Peter and Paul: Two Pillars, Two Ways
In front of St. Peter’s Basilica, like two gigantic guardians of the faith, stand St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Peter the fisherman. St. Paul the intellectual. Peter the rough working class man who speaks from the heart. Paul the man who speaks from his head. Peter the peasant. Paul... Read more -
No Other Options: Are you a Saint or an Ain’t ??
In today’s Gospel (Thursday of the 12th Week) we come face to face with the ultimate necessity of allowing the Lord to transform us. The Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount , is offering us a whole new life and we must choose to accept it and see our life change, based on it, or we will simply... Read more -
The Goal: Union in Christ’s Body and Blood
“O sacred Banquet, wherein Christ is received, the memory of His passion is recalled, the soul is filled with grace, and there is given to us a pledge of future glory.” —St. Thomas Aquinas, O Sacrum Convivium (hymn for Corpus Christi) Salvation History—the unfolding story of... Read more -
Nine Ways the Eucharist Is Hidden in the Old Testament
John Henry Newman once compared Scripture to an inexhaustibly rich wilderness—never failing to reward the faithful explorer with thrilling new discoveries yet always beyond his ability to master it completely: It cannot, as it were, be mapped, or its contents cataloged; but after all our... Read more -
Pentecost Sunday: The Birth of the Universal Church
Pentecost is often spoken of as the “birth” of the Church. It is an apt metaphor: The Church, which you could say had been growing in utero in the persons of Mary, the Twelve, and the small community of disciples, now emerges into the world. And when she does, we can already glimpse all... Read more -
Wojtyla’s Athenian catechesis: An antidote to the culture of veriphobia
Archbishop Karol Wojtyla’s newly discovered 1965 reflections on St. Paul’s discourse at the Areopagus (Acts 17: 16-32), Mars Hill, is the starting point for Wojtyla’s cycle of catecheses in this book, Teachings for an Unbelieving World (Ave Maria Press, 2020). In my judgment, this... Read more -
Meeting Christ In His Church: On the Feast of the Ascension
About 45 minutes outside of Detroit, there is a Protestant church I pass by several times a year, and for years now this church has had a curious sign in front of it. The sign reads, “Believe in Christ, not a religion.” Even disagreeing with the content of the message, I suppose you have... Read more -
The Meaning of the Resurrection Is the Triumph of Mercy
Sunday’s Gospel records a post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus in which a flow of mercy to sinners starts that will not stop until we have all attained the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls, as St. Peter tells us in the epistle. Gospel (Read Jn 20:19-31) The... Read more -
God’s Perfect Mercy – A Meditation for Divine Mercy Sunday
We live in times in which mercy, like so many other things, has become a detached concept in people’s minds, separated from the things that really help us to understand it. For indeed, mercy makes sense and is necessary because we are sinners in desperate shape. Yet many today think it unkind... Read more