Reflections on life, spirituality, religion and more by various Carmelite and Catholic authors.
Prayer is the offering in spirit that has done away with the sacrifices of old.... We pray in spirit, and so offer in spirit the sacrifice of prayer.... All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look out to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own fashion.
[From the treatise On Prayer by Tertullian]
With the return of that season marked out in a special way by the mystery of our redemption, and of the days that lead up to the paschal feast, we are summoned more urgently to prepare ourselves by a purification of spirit. The whole Church rejoices in the forgiveness of sins. It rejoices in the forgiveness not only of those who are then reborn in holy baptism but also of those who are already numbered among God’s adopted children. Read this reflection from a sermon by Pope Saint Leo the Great.
The Feast of the Holy Family. Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ’s life was like and even to understand his Gospel. [From an address by Saint Pope Paul VI]
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. May we one day be able to say with her: “Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is you, O my God, who have given me this place. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I shall be love. Thus I shall be everything, and thus my dream will be realized.”
[Excerpt from Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux]
