There is nothing new in being told that we are dust and shall return to dust.

In God's providence, He allows us to sin so we might repent and become saints.

A Jesus who agrees with everyone and everything, a Jesus without his holy anger, without the hardness of truth and genuine love, is not the real Jesus as he is depicted in the Scriptures, but a pitiable caricature.

Europe and its contiguous lands were in a chaotic condition in 1240. 

Have we not felt from time to time that some barrier stands between Jesus and our heart? 

In the days before my mother died, I would wake early and tiptoe into the room to pray the divine office in silence by her bedside.

It is not pessimism that makes us say these things. 

It is a talent, for example, if you are unable to pray; yet you consider this to be a misfortune. 

"Gratitude is the mother of all virtues; ingratitude is the sin most offensive to Heaven." (Saint Ignatius Loyola)

Through the years that I have spent working in the slums I have learned that it is precisely the poor who are aware of human dignity.