Advent: A Time of Preparation and Penance
The Church celebrates Advent as a time of preparation for the birth of Christ. It is not as old as Lent, the great fast to prepare for Easter and the initiation of new converts at the vigil, but arose at least by the fifth century. The logic of Advent and Lent is that major events take preparation and in this case we are preparing our souls to rece...
How to Receive the Eucharist Worthily
Catholics receive the Eucharist regularly, but we do not focus our attention on preparing to receive Christ worthily and fruitfully in the sacrament. The danger is complacency and allowing obstacles to creep in that block the graces of the Eucharist from taking root in us. In the early Church, Christians received the Eucharist frequently, as we ...
Feeling Directionless? Prepare Better for Communion.
The modern phrase “faith journey” gets so much use that some almost feel an aversion to using it - its cliché. And in some instances it is the surface language of relativism, since a “faith journey can take many paths”, which is covert language to say that Jesus is not the way but a way, as if as long as we are moving and it feels spir...