This Lent, as dictators kindle war, pestilence takes lives, famine afflicts the poor, and death seems to stalk the earth, let us respond by turning to Life, to Jesus Himself.
We fast meekly now, on Ash Wednesday and all Lenten Fridays, so that we may inherit the earth along with its Lord. We submit to the hardships of this world, so that we may become worthy of the new heavens and the new earth.
In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Marian Fathers invite the faithful to unite in prayer and continue to pray the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet for peace and an end to war.
St. Augustine was born in 354 A.D. in a small town in what is now Algeria, North Africa. His father was a pagan, but his mother was a devout Christian believer, later canonized and known to the whole Catholic world as St. Monica.
We should remember to be grateful, particularly on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle on Feb. 22, for Christ's loving protection of His Church.
"Our Lady, I know that you are very gracious and cannot help loving us whom your Son and your God has loved with the greatest love. Who can tell how often you allay the ire of the Judge when the virtue of divine justice is about to strike?"
If the gospels show us God's mercy expressed in decisive acts for our salvation (such as the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection of His Son), the Apostolic letters in the New Testament are the praise and proclamation of that mercy, and an exhortation to practice it.