Is this real life?

“life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking toward God.”--Cardinal Ratzinger

Happy feast of the Immaculate Conception

“Mary was as pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun.  If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of the window.”
                 --Thomas Merton.

To reflect upon the Immaculate Conception of Mary is thus to allow oneself to be attracted by the “yes” which joined her wonderfully to the mission of Christ, Redeemer of human- ity; it is to allow oneself to be taken and led by her hand to pronounce in one’s turn “fiat” to the will of God, with all one’s existence interwoven with joys and sadness, hopes and disap- pointments, in the awareness that tribulations, pain and suffer- ing make rich the meaning of our pilgrimage on the earth."
             --BXVI, Message for the Sixteenth World Day of the Sick January 11, 2008



Mary, the Medium through which the Light enters the word, Ora Pro Nobis.

A summons

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience – almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasonedpublic debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good (cf. Spe Salvi, 24). Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that “in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation”, and a democracy without values can lose its very soul (cf. Centesimus Annus, 46). Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent “indispensable supports” of political prosperity.


--Benedict XVI

Been Burned By This World's Cold

The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort; you were made for greatness. -Pope Benedict XVI