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Serving Catholics for 25 Years
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| Note from the Managing Editor |
"'We do not know how to love,' says Louis, at the brink of his conversion to Christ, in Francois Mauriac's Vipers' Tangle. What we need, he adds, is a love that the world has forgotten. And that is the love of Christ, the love that is a consuming fire, that burns to ashes our hearts of stone and fills the emptiness with Christ's own heart, a heart of true flesh.
This is from Anthony Esolen's "When Love Isn't Love."
"When we say that God is love, and we are blithely confident about it rather than abashed or stunned into silence by the mystery, we are apt to make a false god of the pleasant affections we feel."
This reminds me of a passage from C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, in which Screwtape writes his nephew, "I have known cases where what the patient called his 'God' was actually located up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him."
False gods can be subtle; idolatry can rest even in our unconscious assumptions. Advent is the time to bring these into the light and dig them up at the root.
With prayer for you all this week. - Meaghen Gonzalez
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"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people." - G.K. Chesterton
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| All Must Be Fulfilled |
| Servant of God Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage |
| On the one hand, there is the sadness of the world—and on the other hand, when I went to church today the place was flooded with sunshine, and it was a clear, cold day outside. |
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| Love Gives Birth to Heroes |
| Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Columbia |
| An interview with Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, about faith and courage in a time of war. |
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| A Family-Friendly Guide to Sex Education |
| Leila Marie Lawler, Crisis Magazine |
| "How do I answer my children's questions about what they hear on the news?" "How do I parent in a post-Obergefell world?" "My childhood was far from innocent. How do I raise my children?" |
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| When Love Isn't Love |
| Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine |
| We sometimes do not love those people or those things we think we love. We may also love and not be aware of it. But the human heart, without grace, hardly beats at all. It is a tangle of vipers, and when it beats, it squeezes out its poison. |
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| Our Lady of Sorrows and the Gift of Tears |
| Michele Chronister, Catholic Exchange |
| Years ago, I remember reading a book written by an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian. In it, the woman described being an exhausted, sleep deprived mother to many and being up late one night doing laundry. |
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| Confusion and Its Cost |
| First Things |
| History never repeats itself, but patterns of human thought and behavior repeat themselves all the time. |
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| Dobbs Saves Lives |
| Catholic Answers |
| Is it true that outlawing an act doesn't do anything to reduce how much that act is committed? The Supreme Court provides a definitive answer. |
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| Offer Your Work To God |
| Spiritual Direction |
| We will find it no easy task to achieve holiness through our work, afflicted as it is with two effects of the Fall. |
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