Our Lady stands before us in all her glory to show what marvels God will accomplish in us, what heights, what nearness to himself, if we but give ourselves to him as she did, and allow him to work in us.

The Holy Spirit is symbolized as a tongue of burning flame descended onto us, making our very hearts the hearth not only of human passion but also of the divine.

There is a spiritual battle going on within the fallen heart of humanity.

Shortly after I converted to the Catholic Faith in 1986, I attended three retreats given by Fr. John Hardon, SJ, who was Mother Teresa's spiritual director whenever she was in North America.

Acceptance of God's wisdom in planning our lives and submission to it in the events we do not understand bring great peace of soul.

See how God's love comes to look for man even in his ruin and misery.

In rebuking the Pharisees for misunderstanding the heart of the Mosaic Law, our Lord issued a declaration, unprovoked by the immediate context, that reverberates today: "[T]he things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile." (Matthew 15:18)

The explicit idea of a "second conversion" in the spiritual life was first broached by a Jesuit in the 1600s, Father Louis Lallemant, a novice master in France to one of the future North American martyrs, Saint John de Brébeuf.

The other day I was reading in Saint Francis de Sales that a person of a melancholy turn of mind, of a cold and disagreeable disposition, might love God as much as another...

In the supernatural order, the Church, after the manner of our blessed Lord, takes hold of this permanent character of love in the order of nature and elevates the promise "I do" to the dignity of a sacrament.