Learning to be Quick to Listen

The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrated annually on October 7th, holds a significant place in Catholic tradition, commemorating the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through the Rosary . This feast day originated in 1571 to celebrate the victory of the Christian fleet over the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto . Pope St. Pius V attributed this miraculous victory to the fervent prayers of the Rosary offered by Christians throughout Europe. The faithful were called to pray the Rosary for divine assistance, and the subsequent triumph was seen as a clear sign of Mary's powerful patronage. Originally known as Our Lady of Victory , the feast was later renamed Our Lady of the Rosary, solidifying the profound connection between Mary's intercession and this beloved Marian prayer. Today, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary continues to be a call for Catholics to deepen their devotion to Mary and to embrace the Rosary as a spiritual weapon for peace and con...

Halloween, or All Hallows' Eve, is an authentically Catholic holiday—the vigil of the Solemnity of All Saints (November 1st). The word "hallow" literally means holy. As Fr. John Wauck explains, it's a celebration with deeply Christian roots, not a pagan import. However, in our modern culture, the focus has shifted to the macabre, with an emphasis on darkness, blood, and gore that can make Catholic parents uneasy. Rather than retreating from the day, we can reclaim its true meaning for our children by focusing on the victory of Christ over death and the triumph of the saints. The key is intentionality: by steering clear of costumes and decorations that glorify evil, superstition, or the occult, and instead focusing on the beauty and power of our faith. One of the most powerful ways to observe the day is to transform it into a celebration of the saints. Encourage your children to dress up as a saint or a heroic figure, a practice that allows them to become a "liv...

God does not thunder from Sinai when He speaks to the solitary soul; He does not need the great wind or the crushing earthquake. Rather, He dwells in the "still, small voice" (1 Kings 19:11–13)—a voice found at the absolute core of our being, which the Church names conscience . This is the inner sanctuary , the solus ad solum —alone with the Alone—where the person stands naked and free before the divine gaze. This voice of conscience is the echo of God’s own eternal law , resonating within the temporal limits of our own heart. It is the inescapable inclination toward the good and the relentless unease concerning evil . It is not a rulebook imposed from without; it is the signature of the Creator etched into the soul's deepest wellspring. In the Mertonian sense , the conscience is the place where our "false self" —the self constructed of ambitions, anxieties, and societal approval—must fall silent. Only when the clamor of the ego ceases can the "true self...

The Second Vatican Council , in Gaudium et Spes , laid out a profoundly balanced vision for family life. Article 50 of the Constitution teaches that parents must exercise " responsible parenthood ," which requires a serious and prudent consideration of not just the number of children, but the full context of their lives: the physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions of the spouses, the welfare of children already born, and the couple’s own material and spiritual well-being. This is not a simple endorsement of family planning , but a solemn obligation; it calls married couples to be mindful of their duties to God, to themselves, to their families, and to society, ensuring that the decision to welcome new life is always made with freedom, wisdom, and genuine generosity of spirit. Pope Saint John Paul II , through his extensive work on the Theology of the Body and his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio , further deepened this teaching by placing respons...

Scripture itself draws a distinction between two categories of wrongdoing, referring to "sin which is mortal " and "sin which is not mortal" ( 1 John 5 : 16 − 17 ). The latter is what the Church calls venial or pardonable sin, which wounds our relationship with God but doesn't sever it. To understand what tips the scales and makes a sin mortal—or deadly—we must look to three essential criteria, as reiterated by St. John Paul II: the sin must be of grave matter, committed with full knowledge, and done with deliberate consent. These conditions are critical because they speak to the degree of harm to our soul and the deliberate nature of the choice. For instance, some acts, like murder, are considered intrinsically grave and mortal by their very nature. If we know an action is seriously wrong and freely choose it, we’ve effectively chosen that sin over God, a choice that radically changes our fundamental orientation away from Him. A common misconception that St. ...

Many non-Catholic Christians operate under the belief that the Bible alone — Sacred Scripture —is the sole rule of faith, an idea often termed sola scriptura . Interestingly, nowhere in the Bible is this principle explicitly stated or even implied. The historical and scriptural evidence points to a much broader understanding of how God's truth is communicated and preserved: through Sacred Tradition . When Jesus commissioned the apostles in Matthew 28:19–20 , he commanded them to " teach them to obey all that I have commanded you," not to write it all down. This instruction inherently requires the faithful transmission of teaching—oral and lived experience—which is the essence of Sacred Tradition . The writings that eventually became the New Testament were themselves a product of this teaching; as St. Luke explains in his Gospel's introduction, he is committing to an orderly account of the things that were " delivered to us by those who from the beginning were ...