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The apostles are all human, holding their gifts from God is earthen vessels: limited, hard working, reflecting the sufferings of Jesus, aware that all the blessings of their apostolic ministry come from the dying of Jesus, and are directed toward the manifestation of the risen Christ.
The goal of prayer is not some thoughtless state of consciousness. Prayer’s real goal is a surrendered heart of love. And we attain that surrender by having a heart-to-heart conversation—including sharing our distractions and mental diversions—with a God who loves us unconditionally.
Saint Sharbel Makhlouf was a Lebanese Maronite Rite monk, one of the Eastern Catholic Churches who follow a slightly different liturgy and canon law. We in the Latin or Roman Rite often forget that we have sisters and brothers in the East. Saint Sharbel is a good reminder of the wider Church.
Pontius Pilate had a sign put upon Jesus’ cross–written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek–that read “Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19). Those who despised Jesus wanted this sign down! But Pilate refused. “What I have written, I have written” (John 19:22).
Saint Bridget of Sweden was married, a mother of eight, and the foundress of a monastery for men and women. She spent her final days in Rome seeking to correct Church abuses for which she received much opposition.
The kingdom of God is a state in which everything has been brought together into the will of God. Everything has become what God intended it to be.
We at Franciscan Media are a kind of family—a loving, lovingly dysfunctional, unit.
Author Meghan Cox Gurdon makes a compelling case for the importance of not just adults reading aloud to children, but also adults reading aloud to each other. Stories have the potential to move couples, families, and friends in similar directions—closer to God.
Whether or not Saint Mary Magdalene was a notorious sinner—and she most likely was not—she was one of the women who traveled with Jesus and the Apostles, and was present at the cross. She also was the one chosen to bring the good news of the resurrection to the Apostles.
Mary Magdalene is an attractive figure. She is interested only in the Lord, and when she identifies him nothing else matters. She doesn’t want to let him go.
