(Feast Day ~ September 30) St. Jerome provides us with a wonderful example of how God can raise fallen, imperfect man to sainthood, when that man cooperates with the working of the Holy Spirit in his life. Jerome spent his lifetime struggling with his natural tendencies to be argumentative, sarcastic, and conceited; he spent the […]

(Feast day ~ September 30) We live in an age of entertainment, bombarded by “reality” TV shows and fast-action, high-tech Hollywood films. The lives of many of the saints of the church, however, reveal more real adventure than anything in the popular media, and these stories offer us not entertainment but glimpses of the path […]

(Feast Day ~ September 28) The description of Wenceslas as “good” in the English carol “Good King Wenceslas” is an accurate one. In the difficult period when the people of Bohemia were slowly accepting the Christian faith, Wenceslas provided his people with an example of true devotion to Christ. After his untimely death, he was […]

(Feast Day ~ September 27) At every Mass, we hear a recitation of the names of the holy martyrs of the early church who intercede for us: Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian, and of all thy saints, through whose prayers grant that in all things we […]

Stories of “love triangles” are usually found in Hollywood movies and romance novels. But there is at least one such story that we find in the lives of the saints of the Church. In the years before St. Constantine became Emperor, Christians were subjected to everything from suspicion and derision to torture and murder. Young […]

(Feast Day ~ September 24) One of the joys of visiting an ancient, foreign land is the knowledge that saints have walked the streets there in ages past, that great events in the life of the Church have occurred there, or – as is true of the Holy Land – our Lord himself hallowed this […]

The news is filled with stories of wayward youth – those who have rebelled against the rules of society and their families and who have begun lives of crime, or at the least, irresponsibility. In the Church, however, we hear of youth on a different path, of those who have seen the beauty and truth […]

(Feast Day ~ September 22) We are once again living in dangerous times. In so many parts of this world, persecution – and even death – are the fate of those who call themselves Christians. Our Lord warned us of these times: ..you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who […]

(Feast Day ~ September 22) The Orthodox path for converting others to Christianity is one of example and teaching rather than coercion. During the first centuries, as the power of government was being exercised to coerce people away from the faith, the example of faithful Christians brought about the rapid spread of the church throughout […]

(Feast Day ~ September 19) The history of our salvation is a story of preparing the way, of laying groundwork, of taking advantage of right conditions and making the best of others: God gave Moses the law to prepare a particular people for giving his Son; the prophets gave those people the expectation of a […]