The greatest grace God can give someone is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers --- and then sustain him with His grace so he may endure to the end and be saved. ~Saint Justin Martyr

Election Day USA 2012

"Allow Christ to exercise his purifying action in society. Do not crucify him anew." ~Pope Benedict XVI in his "Message to Politicians," which was released 11 Oct 12.

Let us be raised to the one who made the dust of our lowliness into the body of his glory. ~St. Leo the Great

The renewal of the Church is also achieved through the witness offered by the lives of believers: by their very existence in the world, Christians are called to radiate the word of truth that the Lord Jesus has left us. The Council itself, in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, said this: While “Christ, ‘holy, innocent and undefiled’ (Heb 7:26) knew nothing of sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), but came only to expiate the sins of the people (cf. Heb 2:17)... the Church ... clasping sinners to its bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal. The Church, ‘like a stranger in a foreign land, presses forward amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God’, announcing the cross and death of the Lord until he comes (cf. 1 Cor 11:26). But by the power of the risen Lord it is given strength to overcome, in patience and in love, its sorrow and its difficulties, both those that are from within and those that are from without, so that it may reveal in the world, faithfully, although with shadows, the mystery of its Lord until, in the end, it shall be manifested in full light.”~Pope Benedict XVI, from his Apostolic Letter  announcing the Year of Faith, Oct 11,2011

God made us so that we might become partakers of the divine nature and sharers in his eternity, and so that we might come to be like him through deification by grace. ~St. Maximus the Confessor 

Feast of All Souls

"Love does not dominate; it cultivates." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happy Feast of All Saints!

The New Evangelization begins with each of us taking it upon ourselves to renew once again our understanding of the faith and our appropriation of it in a way that more deeply, willingly and joyfully embraces the Gospel message and its application today. ~From Cardinal Donald Wuerl's Report at the Synod of Bishops, Oct 8, 2012