As we’ve seen in the past few issues, three major figures in Catholic history represent a Mariology that draws the faithful through Mary to Jesus: Saint Louis de Montfort, Blessed James Alberione, and Saint Pope John Paul II. These three figures are the influences on Guiseppe Forlai’s new book, Mary Mother of Apostles, and we looked at both de Montfort and Alberione in previous articles: Mary as Mother and Teacher Today How to Live Marian Devotion to Proclaim ChristPope John Paul II ...

You are busy. Life happens. You can barely keep up. You know that you could be thinking about more important things, but you don't have the time to stop and consider what they would be, much less do them.And then something happens. You are stopped in your tracks. A spouse leaves. A friend dies. A job is lost. Opportunities pass you by. A child makes decisions that break your heart. As you absorb the pain of what is happening, the important things begin to surface. What was hidden, suddenly s...

I’m one of those people who, for a long time, claimed to love G. K. Chesterton without ever having read anything he wrote. I liked the idea of him, and since I was a theology major I pretended to know all about him when he came up in conversation. But it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I decided to stop posing and actually pick up one of his books.I reluctantly borrowed Orthodoxy from my dad, expecting to be bored out of my mind. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Aft...

Did you grow up saying prayers to Our Lady at bedtime? Is there a special image or icon of the Mother of God that is dear to you? And did you then become an adult with a special devotion to Mary?If this sounds like you, then you’ve probably spent the last couple of years wondering how to renew our understanding of Our Lady’s role in the Church today in giving Jesus to the world, especially in the light of the New Evangelization. It’s normal to be perplexed: the 21st century so ...

Isn’t it an amazing feeling when you read a book or an article and feel that the author has really captured your own thoughts about something? When you find yourself nodding along as you read? When you read words written before you were born and feel that the writer really “got it”? That’s how I feel reading G.K. Chesterton.This was a man of great appetites: intellectual, spiritual, and physical. He weighed upward of 300 pounds, and “liked his beer and Burgundy.&rdq...

To live by means of Mary means to accept the “means” through which the Mother of Jesus experienced the Son being formed in her womb. This is the first step of true devotion; without it the others are not possible. This means, which always formed and accompanied Mary, is the Holy Spirit. To live alongside Mary means not to choose any other light but that of the Consoler. The Spirit who descended upon her at the annunciation is the same One who works in me and who wants to generate a n...

"To consecrate oneself to Mary is not a passing fashion, a spiritual hobby, but a ready response to the gift of the dying Jesus: “Here is your mother” (Jn 19:27). We don’t need to distrust the gifts of God, for he knows what we need before we even ask him (see Mt 6:8). Perhaps no one has seen this act of Jesus in a theological and symbolic framework as well as Saint Louis de Montfort. For this great French apostle, baptized persons must cast themselves like raw clay into t...

"To consecrate oneself to Mary is not a passing fashion, a spiritual hobby, but a ready response to the gift of the dying Jesus: “Here is your mother” (Jn 19:27). We don’t need to distrust the gifts of God, for he knows what we need before we even ask him (see Mt 6:8). Perhaps no one has seen this act of Jesus in a theological and symbolic framework as well as Saint Louis de Montfort. For this great French apostle, baptized persons must cast themselves like raw clay into t...

Getting older, we discover, is not for the faint of heart.It’s not just our physical bodies that are betraying us with aches and pains; it’s the whole process of changing expectations for the future and looking back to a past we cannot change. Neither of these activities is pleasant or easy.And we don’t have much choice in the matter. As we move from our forties into our fifties and beyond, the nights we spend staring at the ceiling in the dark become more frequent, and often m...

In old English, and in some traditions today, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Holy Ghost. But it’s not exactly what we imagine when we think of ghosts today! Most of us have a pretty good idea of what ghosts are “supposed” to look like—and heaven forbid they should chase us!But the Holy Spirit? That might be something else altogether.The Holy Spirit is God working in us. When you feel afraid and are in prayer and experience a sudden wave of reassurance, that’s...