Tag Archives: holiness

The Theology of Thermometers and Thermostats

18 Sunday Jul 2021

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Thermometers and Thermostats

Saints John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas have exerted an enormous influence on Christian thinking, writing and theology. They are included among the Doctors and Saints of the Church, in recognition of their outstanding teaching, orthodoxy and holiness of life. Although the writings of each cover many subjects, we share their insights on marriage.

St. John Chrysostom (347-407) is regarded as the greatest orator and biblical commentator of the Eastern Church. The name “Chrysostom” means “gold mouth,” given to him because of his outstanding preaching skills. Chrysostom is one of the greatest apologists of Christian marriage. He expounded that God ordained marriage primarily to promote holiness of the husband and wife and secondarily to produce children.

Here is St. John Chrysostom’s advice to young husbands on how to treat their wives…

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Saints Louis and Zélie Martin: Exemplars of Holy Family Life

11 Sunday Jul 2021

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Tomorrow, July 12th, is the Feast Day of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower.” In October 2015, they became the first couple to be canonized together as husband and wife.

Blessed Louis and Marie Zélie Guerin Martin were married on July 12, 1858. The couple had nine children, but four of them died in infancy. All five of the surviving children, including St. Thérèse, entered religious life, highlighting the important role parents play in their children’s human and spiritual upbringing. Zélie Martin died of cancer in 1877, at the age of 45; her husband died when he was 70 in 1894.

Fr. Antonio Sangalli, vice postulator for the cause for the canonization of the couple, said, “Louis and Zélie demonstrated through their lives that conjugal love is an instrument of holiness, a way to holiness consummated by the two persons together.” He noted that this aspect today is “the most important aspect to value in the family. There is an enormous need for a simple spirituality lived out in daily life.”

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Turn to Me

25 Sunday Apr 2021

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Adoration of the Golden Calf
Nicolas Poussin, c. 1634

In those days…every man did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6

The book of Judges in the Old Testament could be called the “Book of What Not to Do.” Time and time again, God delivers His people Israel from bondage, oppression, and captivity. Time and time again, the Israelites quickly turn away from the one True God to worship foreign gods. Repeatedly during the Exodus from captivity in Egypt, God called them, “a stiff-necked people” (Ex 32:9).

Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord, and come to his sanctuary, which he has sanctified for ever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. 2 Chronicles 30:8

When we read the Old Testament, we wonder how a people could be so unyielding toward the God who performed so many miracles of provision and protection for His chosen ones. But are we any better than they were? What gods do you worship in your life? Do you truly “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Dt 6:5)?

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Pray for the Protection of Families

03 Saturday Aug 2019

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Pius XII Prayer for Families

In his encyclical Casti Connubii (On Christian Marriage), Pope Pius XII defined the foremost responsibility of husband and wife in marriage:

For all men of every condition, in whatever honorable walk of life they may be, can and ought to imitate that most perfect example of holiness placed before man by God, namely Christ Our Lord, and by God’s grace to arrive at the summit of perfection, as is proved by the example set us of many saints.

This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.[1]

Thus, the principle end of marriage is the mutual assistance of spouses in growing in holiness with the goal of reaching heaven.

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Extraordinary Witness of Conjugal and Familial Spirituality: Louis and Zélie Martin

18 Thursday Oct 2018

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Three years ago today Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux were canonized by Pope Francis. The couple was the first to be canonized together as husband and wife, giving testimony to their “extraordinary witness of conjugal and familial spirituality,” said Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Prefect for the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

Saints Louis and Marie Zélie Guerin Martin were married in 1858. The couple had nine children, but four of them died in infancy or early childhood. All five of the surviving children, including St. Therese, entered religious life, highlighting the important role parents play in their children’s human and spiritual upbringing. Zélie Martin died of cancer in 1877, at the age of 45; Louis died when he was 70 in 1894.

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Be a Witness to the Love of Christ

01 Saturday Sep 2018

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Kolbe_Forget not love

Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe (Jan. 8, 1894 – Aug. 14, 1941) died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, during World War II, and is remembered as a “martyr of charity” for dying in place of another prisoner who had a wife and children. He was canonized by St. John Paul II on October 10, 1982. Present at the canonization was Franciszek Gajowniczek, one of the ten men from his barracks picked to suffer death by starvation as punishment for the escape of a prisoner. His life was spared when Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

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Growing in Holiness

18 Saturday Aug 2018

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JPII not sum of weaknesses

Our society at large, and even our Church, is suffering from a lack of holiness. Satan is on the attack to destroy families, the Church, and countless lives. He is using sinful desires of the heart to enslave us. Collectively, we are suffering from heart disease. St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians speaks clearly on this matter.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh…Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:16, 19-21

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The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

31 Sunday Dec 2017

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The Two Trinities, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1675-82

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family. Through the Incarnation, the Divine Word assumed a human body, entering into every aspect of human life, including family life, sanctifying it and making it a path to holiness.

Teacher and author Scott Hahn says,

The family is the key to Christmas. The family is the key to Christianity…When God came to save us, he made salvation inseparable from family life, manifest in family life. Since the family is the ordinary setting of human life, he came to share it, redeem it and perfect it. He made it an image and sacrament of a divine mystery. Salvation itself finds meaning only in familial relations.[1]

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Our Lady of the Rosary, Pray for Us

07 Saturday Oct 2017

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Praying hands rosary

Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary in the Roman rite of the Catholic Church. Since the sixteenth century when St. Dominic was inspired to develop the devotion, the Rosary has been used to combat both physical and spiritual enemies.

This feast was instituted by Pope St. Pius V to honor Mary for the Christian victory over the Turks at Lepanto on October 7, 1571. He attributed the victory to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was invoked through praying the Rosary throughout Europe for protection from the Turkish invasion.

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