In her poem “Why I Love You, O Mary!”, Saint Therese of Lisieux says that the Blessed Virgin teaches her how to weep and rejoice—what to have sorrow for and what to rejoice over.
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The St. Josemaria Institute “spiritual backpack” is a curated selection of resources for students, families and teachers to help maintain a happy spiritual life throughout the school year.
In Opus Dei: Opus Dei: An Association Which Fosters the Search for Holiness in the World, St. Josemaria Escriva explained that the development of the laity rests on a renewed awareness of the dignity of the Christian vocation.
St. Josemaria’s advice and points for reflection for those who may have fears about death.
We are here, consummati in unum! united in prayer and intention, and ready to begin this period of conversation with Our Lord, having renewed our desires to be effective instruments in his hands.
I was deeply moved by the Epistle in today’s Mass, and I imagine the same will have happened to you. I realized that God was helping us, through the words of the Apostle, to contemplate the divine interlacing of the three theological virtues.
Looking creates responsibility, especially when looking means seeing another’s distress… The first reading for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross features a look that saves.
Receiving Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist is the closest we’ll ever be to Jesus Christ on earth. Therefore, St. Josemaria Escriva encouraged everyone to truly recollect themselves in prayer during those holy moments of our lives.
Does everyone have a breaking point? A point beyond which too much pressure causes collapse?
Having just read in the Acts of the Apostles about Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit came down on the Lord’s disciples, we are conscious of being present at the great display of God’s power with which the Church’s life began to spread among all nations.
We are at the beginning of Lent: a time of penance, purification and conversion. It is not an easy program, but then Christianity is not an easy way of life.
It hardly needs to be said that finding God in daily life is one of the keynotes of Saint Josemaría’s spirituality. But do we ourselves want to be found by God in daily life?
St Josemaria expresses the wish in The Way that we should learn to speak of the holy souls in purgatory as “My good friends the souls in purgatory” (571).
We should not forget that he came on earth to redeem everyone, because ‘he wishes all men to be saved’. There is not a single soul in whom Christ is not interested. Each soul has cost him the price of his Blood.
There is only one way to become more familiar with God, to increase our trust in him. We must come to know him through prayer; we must speak to him and show him, through a heart to heart conversation, that we love him.
You and I need to be made anew, we need to wake up from the slumber of feebleness by which we are so easily lulled and to become aware once again, in a deeper and more immediate way, of our condition as children of God.
I’d like to have a moment of your time. I’m not asking for myself, but on behalf of the Lord Jesus.
This hymn to freedom is echoed in all the mysteries of our Catholic faith. The Blessed Trinity draws the world and man out of nothing, in a free outpouring of love. The Word comes down from Heaven and takes on our flesh, an act which bears the splendid mark of freedom in submission.
All honest human activities can be offered to God, sanctified, and turned into a means and opportunity for apostolate. Work, but also rest, which we need in order to renew our strength so that we can support our families and serve society.
Let us set the scene. I picture Jesus sitting by the shore of the Sea of Galilee, with Capernaum in the backdrop on a somewhat bitter evening.