of the human person from conception until natural death
Known as Brother André, this seemingly ordinary Holy Cross brother was declared venerable in 1978 and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. Pope Benedict XVI approved his decree of sainthood on February 9, 2010, with the formal canonization taking place on October 17, 2010.
The celebration of Epiphany emerged around AD 361 initially as a commemoration of the birth of Christ and, later on, in order to recall the three miracles that manifested the divinity of Christ: the Lord’s Baptism, the visit of the Magi, and the miraculous transformation of water into wine at Cana.
Pope Saint Paul VI introduced the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God in 1970. Then, in his later encyclical Marialis Cultus he described it this way, “This celebration, assigned to January 1 in conformity with the ancient liturgy of the city of Rome, is meant to commemorate…
The Massachusetts 2025-2026 legislative session will begin on Wednesday, January 8. The assisted suicide bill – The End of Life Options Act – will certainly be introduced again as it has been in every session since its defeat as a referendum in 2012. We expect it to be referred to the Joint Committee
Like Easter Sunday, Christmas has an octave or eight days of celebration that began on December 25th and will culminate on the eighth or octave day that is January 1st. During these eight days of Christmas, clergy usually wear white vestments. But there are exceptions when the priest wears red…
On January 5, 1964, Pope Saint Paul VI visited Nazareth, in the Basilica of the Annunciation, where he delivered an address highlighting some aspects of the life of Jesus in that Galilean town. He noted this: “Nazareth is the school in which we begin to understand the life of Jesus…
C. S. Lewis wrote, “The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this” (Miracles). Christ put on our nature so that we can put on his. The first happens at the…
Even in the liturgical calendar, the season of Advent points ahead to Christmas because while the term Advent literally means arrival, it signifies the arrival of the Child Jesus. Being somewhat redundant, you could say that advent is genuinely adventual — a time before, a looking forward — and it lacks meaning without Christmas.
Nature and dignity 