THIS should be no surprise to us, no breaking news. We just have to acknowledge this very obvious fact and avoid falling into two extremes. One is that of perfectionism, when we think everything will just be rigidly perfect, and anything that stains and distorts...
A POPULAR consideration that many people nowadays make when they try to understand someone who has a different view from theirs is to try to figure out “where that person is coming from.” I hear that expression very often these days. It’s a laudable gesture...
ONCE again we need to reiterate this basic truth. We can never be truthful unless we refer things to God. In fact, what would really assure us that we would be fully in the truth despite truth’s many levels, aspects, angles, etc., is when we...
YES, we need to pray without ceasing, as St. Paul told us in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. (5,16) To keep our spiritual life alive, to make it survive all trials in life, let alone, to make it work effectively and grow healthily, we...
WE have to learn to lose any fear of the cross. That instinct of ours to be afraid and to flee from the cross has to be reversed, and made into an instinct of love for the cross. This may take time and effort, this may...
THAT’S right. No spirituality has the exclusive right to Christianity. No spirituality can claim to be the only way to holiness. No matter how effective and appropriate to some people, no spirituality can claim a universal coverage of all the faithful in the Church. But, yes,...
WE cannot deny that no matter how much we try to keep ourselves clean, not only physically but also morally and spiritually, we cannot avoid the dirt that there is always in the world. Some of this dirt today can appear to be so nice that...
THE quick answer is the Holy Spirit. It is God, of course, who is the source and end of everything. But insofar as orthodoxy is a humanly-mediated affair, it is the official teaching office of the Church, the Magisterium, who has been entrusted the power to...
WE have to learn to distinguish the faith from the many human ideologies that can be inspired by faith. First of all, faith is a supernatural gift, while an ideology is a system of ideas and ideals that forms the basis of some human behavior....
ST. John in his gospel made it clear what God’s attitude is toward us. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,” he said, “but that the world might be saved through him.” (3,17) That divine attitude should also be ours...
