The feast of Divine Mercy, as recorded in the diary of Saint Faustina, receives from Jesus himself the promise that the soul that goes to Sacramental Confession (the confession may take place some days before), and receive Holy Eucharistic on that day, shall obtain the total forgiveness of all sins and punishment. Additionally, the Catholic Church grants a plenary indulgence (observing the usual rules) with the recitation of some simple prayers.

After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the Body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took His body.

There many other things that can be said about Divine consolations, especially about the reasons why God decides to give them to us in the first place, but I believe that the most essential treatment that needs to be made here concerns how we ought to respond to them. I say that because Divine consolations will come to many us for whatever reason God deigns, but it is how we respond to them is what is most crucial to know.

The unconventional message of the magi’s visit is this: The near proximity to light has no bearing upon the reception of light. In other words, God is always the same – He never changes, but what does change is how our heart receives Him.

The Christian Feast of Pentecost is the fulfillment of Jewish agrarian festival. For on this day we commemorate the anniversary of Christ Jesus giving His people the Holy Spirit, which He said would guide us to all truth (Cf. Jn. 15:13), and teach us everything and remind us all that Jesus taught us (Cf. Jn. 14:26). In the Old Covenant the Law was written on tablets and parchment, but God’s sharing with the Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of the promise that YHWH made to Jeremiah that in the New Covenant, “I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God and they shall be my people.” (Jer. 31:33).

This week’s Gospel Reading at the Sunday’s Mass comes from Matthew 25-31-46: Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be [...]

It’s been popular for I don’t know how long for people to use the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs as a Biblical template for a man’s ideal image of an earthly wife and, as such, it has been subtitled in most Bibles. And perhaps some good fruit can be gleaned from it for that purpose, but let us not take this chapter out of context by completely extracting it out of the book in which it was written.

This week’s Sunday Gospel Reading at Mass comes from Matthew 25:1-13: Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were [...]

Together, (1) Being sent as Christ was sent (in the Holy Spirit, as a sacrifice), (2) Not being a burden to those to whom we are sent, and (3) Freely proclaiming the authentic Word of God without coercion, are the three indissoluble foundational pillars to Christian Evangelization. As long the evangelist is prayerful in these, he/she will be in a position to be best used by God to attend to the needs of His people.

This week’s First Reading at Mass comes from Exodus 22:20-26: Thus says the LORD: “You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong [...]

This week’s Sunday Gospel Reading at Mass comes from Matthew 22:15-21: The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that [...]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today’s First Reading at Mass comes from Jeremiah 20:7-9: You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, [...]

Christ Jesus bestowed upon the Apostle Simon Peter a particular ministry, that he and all those who would succeed him as the Vicar of Christ on Earth would carry out. This reflection concerns the Second Confession of Saint Peter. Attached to that confession is the duty for Simon Peter and his successors in the Peterine Ministry to be guided by the truth of God the Father, to obey the commands of God the Son, and to listen for and to act upon the promptings of the Holy Spirit.