Blogposts

Let us pray to the Holy Infant of Prague.

It was once very popular to give a statue of the Infant of Prague surrounding weddings, new homes, and for special intentions. There is a statue of the Infant of Prague in our parish church. How did devotion to the Infant Jesus of Prague originate? In 16th-century Spain, devotion to the royalty of the Infant Jesus began to spread. Out of great love for the humanity of Christ, St. Teresa of Avila developed the Carmelite devotion to the Infant Jesus.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, has called on the entire Church to make the defense of the family "the primary mission" of its pastoral work. In a reflection published on his blog on the occasion of the liturgical readings for Monday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, the Salesian cardinal argues that much of the current crisis stems from a loss of meaning in life and warns that questioning marriage and the family is part of this process.

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

Pope Pius XI famously said, "no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist" because even "moderate socialism" relies on a concept of society alien to Christian truth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms that the Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated with modern communism and socialism.

Diary of a Cure: A Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine in the face of the miracles of Lourdes

The son of a bourgeois from Lyon, Doctor Alexis Carrel, has lost his faith. Believers are, for him, naive children or stubborn fanatics. He wanted to be a scientist who was absolutely impartial in the face of the facts:

In May 1902, a doctor friend, abruptly prevented from accompanying the sick on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, asked Carrel to take his place.

Revelation: 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

Matthew 12:30 "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."

Christ the center of our lives: there are no half-measures. Blessed Rupert Mayer S.J.

Why does the priest put a drop of water into the wine in the chalice during Mass?

The mixing of the water and wine in the chalice before it is consecrated is required. While failure to add the water is illicit, it does not affect the validity of the sacrament. What makes this act significant is what it represents: the water is Christ’s humanity and the wine His divinity. The mingling of the water and wine in the chalice symbolizes the Incarnation of Christ. It also recalls Christ’s Passion when the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and out flowed blood and water (John 19:34), thus signifying baptism and Eucharist.