There are almost as many screen control apps as there are social media apps. You can buy a device that physically locks your phone and requires you to move to another room to unlock it. We scroll, we stream, and we worry about screen time. The lack of control creates jokes, but also a nagging sense that something isn’t right. We know that there is something more to be created in life. We know consuming isn’t the whole story of what we should be doing. Pope Leo XIV named it in Magnifica Humanitas: “What are we building?” The question was aimed at AI builders and technology experts, but it’s also aimed at each of us.

Carlo the Consumer

Many saints have consumed technology. We have a growing pipeline of individuals with open causes who watched TV, played video games, or scrolled the internet. St. Carlo Acutis is the first one to be canonized. He loved Spiderman, played Pokémon, watched shows. He was a normal kid who consumed media the way normal kids did at the time. He didn’t avoid technology; he lived in it. This is important because it’s easy to think about digital sobriety as total abstinence, but that’s not the model that St. Carlo gives us. Abstinence is also not what Pope Leo is calling us to.

Carlo the Builder

What sets Carlo apart, what brought him to canonization, was his willingness to build. He learned to code and built something for God. St. Carlo visited and researched numerous sites of Eucharistic miracles. He built out a database to track the various details: location, year, pictures, and more. Today, you can still visit the website and learn more about these miracles as told through St. Carlo’s work.

In the past, a print version of his catalog came to my archdiocese. Walking through the poster presentation of these Eucharistic miracles really drove home to me the magnitude of what St. Carlo accomplished. The amount of information about Eucharistic miracles is amazing. More importantly, he created something that continues to evangelize people around the world. He turned a hobby project into something built with heaven in mind. The question Pope Leo continues to pose to us—“What are we building?”—is one we can continuously discern in every aspect of our lives.

As Pope Leo writes, technological innovation can “represent human participation in the divine act of creation.” Carlo’s website wasn’t consumption; it was creation ordered toward God. The project required technical skills and screen time. When posed the question, “What are we building?”, St. Carlo would be able to answer that with clarity and purpose, a tool ordered toward God. His website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles not only brought him closer to Jesus but also the entire world.

The Distinction Matters for All of Us

Most of us default to consuming technology. We read articles, listen to podcasts, and scroll through Church-adjacent social media. These aren’t bad things. But St. Carlo and Pope Leo challenge us to ask: “What am I building?” It could be a strong faith-based community online or a meal train system for new moms. These are all needed.

Building also doesn’t always require a computer. Saints have long built schools, monasteries, and hospitals. Recently, I read a biography about St. Katherine Drexel who built multiple schools to educate former slaves and Native Americans. She built beautiful buildings, intent on glorifying God through every aspect of their education.

Today, building might look like cultivating a prayer ministry, writing a letter to a lonely parishioner, or dropping off cookies to a new neighbor. What all these things require is discernment of how to move from receiving to giving, passive to active. When an individual sees a need and realizes they have God-given talents to meet that need, the entire Church flourishes.

We can even reflect on this question in our own homes or work. How do we build toward the kingdom of God? Practices like prayer and reading Scripture ground us, bringing us closer to understanding what God calls us to. We set examples for those around us, whether it’s our family, coworkers, or others in our community. Being firm in our faith ensures we have the foundation to build. It gives us the confidence to say “yes” even if the ask seems too difficult or demanding.

Pope Leo is confident we can do this: “The Church will be able to bear credible witness to society that seeking the common good together, with shared responsibility and fraternity, is not a utopia, but a real possibility.” St. Carlo took this seriously and showed us what answering the question could look like. He took the tools available to him and asked how they could help him serve God and then he started building. So, again, the question today is: What are you building?

Photo by Michal Biernat on Unsplash

Recently I found myself looking at photographs of the blessing at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. Now the world’s tallest church, its central Tower of Jesus Christ soars 172.5 meters into the sky, the result of more than 144 years of work. Antoni Gaudí called it a “temple of light and harmony” meant to draw the human spirit upward toward the divine.

Among all the striking images from the event, one particularly caught my attention. There stood Pope Leo XIV before the church, holding a tiny aspergillum: a simple handheld sprinkler. The contrast was remarkable: a church, centuries in the making, blessed by something so modest you had to zoom in to see it. If divine blessing were measured by volume and proportional to human effort, one might have expected fire trucks and hoses rather than this inconspicuous gesture.

This scene shows what Christianity is made of.

Christianity often seems no more substantial than a mustard seed: small and easily overlooked. But Jesus tells us that this seed, once planted, grows into the largest of garden plants, becoming a tree so vast that “the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Mt. 13:31–32).

We see the same pattern in Abraham and Sarah, already long past childbearing years when God promised them a son. From that one impossible child came a people as many as the stars and the sand (Gen. 15:5; 22:17). Again and again throughout Scripture, a remnant, almost gone, became the seed of a new beginning.

When the world seeks greatness, it builds. At Babel, men raised a tower “that reaches to the heavens” by their own strength and were scattered (Gen. 11:1–9). The urge is old: to ascend by force and claim glory on our own terms.

God did not raise a tower to force His way into the world. When He wished to dwell among us, He asked the Virgin of Nazareth and waited for her free consent. St. Bernard says that all creation held its breath until Mary said yes. In that exchange, He took our frail flesh so that, in the same humanity, He might give us the fire of His divinity.

This is the other path. Not a conquering hero, not a tower raised by human hands, but a child in the cold, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger. The governing of the universe rests on His shoulders (Is. 9:6), and He comes small. “Unless you become like little children,” He says, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18:3).

A few years ago, my niece, then three, saw a crucifix and noticed that Jesus was wounded. With complete seriousness, she insisted on putting a bandage on Him. She wanted to comfort the Lord who was hurt.

Pascal wrote: “Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.”

The story of Christianity is the story of small things that bear an immense weight: a yes in Nazareth, a drop of water, a piece of bread, a sip of wine. At the Sagrada Família the same mystery is enacted again. A tiny sprinkler blesses what so many years of work have raised. The colossal tower does not bless itself. It receives blessing, humbly, from something far smaller than itself.

Such churches exist because God wishes to dwell among us. At the rededication of Notre-Dame, Mgr. Michel Aupetit called cathedrals écrins, jewel boxes built to hold a piece of bread, the visible sign of the invisible God.

Here, at the Sagrada Família, at Notre-Dame, or in the smallest chapel, the altar makes a refuge. Here we drink, as the king in Psalm 110 drinks from the brook, and we go on. We ourselves are meant to become living stones in that temple, a spiritual house where God dwells. What is small and common is taken up: bread, wine, water, oil. In the liturgy’s “wonderful exchange,” God receives our lowly gifts and gives us His life.

Charles Journet put it simply: “And so, beside the unfathomable greatness of God, only three small things matter: the mystery of life’s brevity; within it, the mystery of the little Child who comes at Christmas; and the mystery of the small host that preserves this through time.”

In the end, the spire and the aspergillum say the same thing: the greatest works of human hands still need God’s touch, and the smallest act offered in faith can carry eternity.

Photo by Csaba Veres on Unsplash

In the previous article, we explored how Ancient Greece was favored by Heaven with the gift of philosophy, a tool through which men of good will and profound spirits intuited distant shades of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity reaches out to man the way the sunlight shines on windows; the clarity with which one receives its light depends on the cleanness of the glass. As magnificent as Ancient Greece was, philosophy by itself is never enough to receive that fullness of light.

Not long after the death of Alexander the Great, greed led to piracy, and piracy across the Adriatic Sea brought the wrath of Rome to Ancient Greece. Nevertheless, it is not man who has the last word, but the Maker of man. While Greece and Rome fought for power, God brought about from their struggle the fusion of Greek and Roman intellect, a union that would create the necessary cultural and anthropological conditions for humanity to receive the Word become Flesh.

Veritas: The Roman Agent of Truth

The Romans, like the Greeks before them, had an established system of truth. Unlike them, however, who used the slow unveiling of Alethia, the Romans used the exercise of Veritas, which was much more executive in nature. It was the measurement, quantification, and classification of the object or concept examined. Veritas was used in the legal system, as well as in the signing of contracts. It was the core of Roman Law. Later, the implementation of Veritas would be paramount for the development of knowledge, discovery, and science.

Nonetheless, the concept of Veritas, straightforward as it was, had its mystic within itself, as it was supported by the virtues of gravitas (responsibility and deep earnestness); severitas (self-control and gravity); and virtus (strength and honesty). The exercise of these virtues was a part of the “Via Romana,” or Roman way, which would thereafter provide a fortified road for the message of Christ to reach the human heart.

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) was a Roman philosopher, lawyer, statesman, and the very personification of the Via Romana. Cicero was born into a prosperous family, but not patrician. Therefore, in order to be someone, he had to rise from his station in life to the very top—something that was nearly impossible in the Roman world. But enter the heights of Rome he did, and he is remembered as the greatest orator in Roman history. Further, Cicero translated the greatest works of Greek philosophy into Latin and became a sage in the field.

The great philosopher, based on the works of Plato and Aristotle, argued that the core of all nobility of action stems from four pillars: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. These four virtues became the core of the Roman spirit and slowly began sowing seeds in well-meaning hearts across the empire. In future times, St. Ambrose would give them the name of “Cardinal Virtues,” and these human virtues would be a nest for the sacred theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-65 AC) was born in Cordoba, Spain, into a wealthy family. His father was a teacher of rhetoric and a writer, the two subjects that would sculpt his life. Seneca served in Roman politics, and in AD 41 he was falsely accused of adultery and sent into exile in Corsica, where he spent eight difficult years. After this time of trial, he was recalled into service as a tutor of the young son of Emperor Claudius, Nero, who would later accuse him falsely of forming a conspiracy against his life and sentence him to death.

Seneca is reported to have died bravely, to the extent of having consoled his loved ones prior to his execution and asking them to use the philosophy he taught them, so that they may overcome the moment with dignity.

Throughout his extensive writings, Seneca taught the Roman people to live in the present with a domesticated heart, grounded in the common good, to take misgivings of any kind with serenity, and to acknowledge with peace the fact that we will die. In essence, a partial formula for sainthood.

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BC-19 BC) was born in Andes, Italy, during the days of the consulship of Pompey. His father was a man of simple origins who overcame the limitations of his condition by both marrying beyond his station and making good investments with the fortune that came with his new reality. Despite belonging to another class, or perhaps because of it, he made sure that, unlike himself, his son Virgil obtained a good education which eventually put the young man in the dwellings of the titans of Roman society. During his studies, Virgil was noticed and patronized, and as a result, he was able to dedicate himself solely to the craft of wordsmithing.

Nevertheless, the glance of God always separates those whom He blesses, and He shares with them the cross of His Divine Son. In the year 41 BC, after the Battle of Philippi, Octavian expropriated lands across Northern Italy in order to pay the veterans that had marched with him. One of these lands were those of Virgil’s father.

The loss of the estate brought about ruin to the family and wounded Virgil deeply. Yet, the coming of winter is but a prophecy of spring, and so it was out of his profound pain that Virgil brought about the most staggering prophecy of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. In his Fourth Eclogue, Virgil writes of a boy of divine race, whose office will be to bring the world back to the age of gold, free reality from the snake and the poison plant, and restore universal harmony.

It is likely that Virgil did not know what he was writing, or perhaps his conscious mind directed his pen elsewhere, but his soul, by the grace of God, knew that he was writing about our Lord and Savior, who indeed came to earth only a few decades later.

The Stage for Salvation

In previous parts of this article, we have studied the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, explored the concept of Semina Verbi, and analyzed the indirect clues that the Trine God left in the Greco-Roman mind. In the next and last part, we will examine the direct action of the Holy Trinity in the Jewish world and how God prepared Israel to receive the Incarnate Word.  

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the Beauty of the Holy Trinity. Click here for more.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In February 2020, Pamela Anderson separated from her movie mogul husband of 12-days, Jon Peters, declaring: “Life is a journey and love is a process. With that universal truth in mind, we have mutually decided to put off the formalization of our marriage certificate and put our faith in the process.” Britney Spears described falling out of love overnight with a former teenage boyfriend in her now famous April 1999 Rolling Stones cover story, saying, “I just woke up one day and click, it was gone.” Oxford Reference online brings together “2 million digitized entries across Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias” and defines love as “An intense feeling of fondness or attraction, deeper and stronger than liking, especially when associated with a romantic or sexual attachment to someone.”

All three of these examples share something in common, namely, the belief or conviction that love is a feeling, an “intense feeling,” which, like most other feelings, can run its course and be “gone.” Love is more a “process” than a “formalization” as one might expect to find, for example, in a “marriage certificate.”

While only a small sample, the above examples reflect some of the more common perspectives on love in the early 21st century. Love is a feeling. It is more fluid and open than formal and restraining. It is spontaneous, akin to Heraclitus’s metaphor of the river, wherein “no man ever steps in the same river twice.” In its most genuine form, love has no form but rather flows continuously with no constraint, at least until it doesn’t flow anymore.

This understanding of love is reflected in the marked increase among Catholic couples who are cohabitating before marriage. The Bishops of Pennsylvania defined “cohabitation” as “the relationship of a man and woman who are sexually active and share a household, though they are not married.” According to a survey of U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in October 2019, 62% of Catholics said that casual sex outside of marriage was “sometimes or always acceptable.”

What is less understood, however, is how these popular notions of love tend to oppose love and law in a way that is foreign to a biblical perspective on love and human relationships. According to these popular understandings, when St. Paul taught that “one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8), it is interpreted to mean that the law is left behind, its formalism and justice set aside by the meeker, more positive, less judgmental disposition of love. But this is a misinterpretation for several reasons.

First, if love is a feeling and, as St. John teaches us, “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8), then God is a feeling. I’ll leave it to the better reflection of the reader to draw out the disastrous implications for all of us were it true that God is a feeling. There are too many to recount here, but suffice it to say that Jesus was not “feeling it” amid His consummate act of love upon the Cross on Good Friday.

Secondly, when Paul teaches that “one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” he doesn’t mean we leave the law behind. Instead, he teaches us something about love, namely, love fulfills the law and does not break the law. Deeds violating the law of God are not deeds of love, since love fulfills the law instead of breaking it. So, for example, entering the bridal chamber outside of marriage, which today is widely construed as “making love,” is a violation of the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue and so cannot be called love, at least not from within a biblical perspective. Missing Mass on Sunday violates the Third Commandment of the Decalogue. This is more than a failure to follow the rules. It is a failure to love because love fulfills the law and does not violate it.

This is consistent with the teaching of Christ who declared, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt. 5:17). We do not leave the law behind in the fulfillment of love. Rather, in love, we fulfill the law instead of neglecting it or otherwise setting it aside in all its formalism by violating it.

St. Bonaventure made a similar point when he taught that the law of God is not “kept in the same way in the old and new law, but better in the new, and more completely in the fatherland. For God lives according to the laws that he gave” (see Collations on the Hexaemeron, Conference Thirteen, #17). If God lives according to the laws that He gave us, and God is love, then love is never lawless. Thus, when we violate the law, we are not so much growing in the perfection of love as sowing lawlessness in ourselves and in others. But lawlessness has nothing to do with the One True God who is love.

So, whence comes this idea that love dispenses with the formal requirements of the law to thereby render love lawless? Paul opposes Christ and a figure he calls the “lawless one” in his second letter to the Thessalonians (2:8-9). He describes the lawless one as “one whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie.” Constrained now by “the restrainer” the “lawless one” will appear when the restrainer is removed. He will be let loose for a time during which he will sow “wonders that lie,” but Christ will ultimately destroy and render him powerless “by the manifestation of his coming.”

We might be tempted to conclude that we are living in the final era when the “lawless one” will be let loose to wreak havoc upon our world, but this is not necessarily the case. Paul also stated in the same letter, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thess. 2:7), and Jesus called Satan a liar and the “father of lies” (Jn. 8:44). At the very least, these texts indicate the deceptive source of subtlety evident in any notion of love with lawlessness as its fruit. It also gives new meaning to Paul exhorting the Ephesians to live “the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) which means living love in truth by fulfilling the law of God instead of violating it, since true love is never lawless. The truth about love comes from the nature of God who, being love, fulfills the law, since even “God lives according to the laws that he gave,” meaning He will never lie.

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What led one of the leading Anglicans of England, a brilliant theologian and Oxford graduate, to forsake Anglicanism for a belief that he had recently declared was led by the Antichrist pope? What occurred in his life during middle age that made him convert to the one belief that he had stood against his entire life?

John Henry Newman did what few people of the time expected: he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Catholicism and Anglicanism were very similar at the time Newman lived, the nineteenth century. The big differences between the two expressions of Christianity were the leadership of the pope, the veneration of saints and Mary, and the dispute over the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Compared to other Protestant expressions, Anglicanism, with its hierarchy and liturgy, was very much like Catholicism. And yet the differences for a person such as Newman seemed vast. How did his conversion come about? He recorded this spiritual change in his autobiographical portrait of himself, Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

Born in 1801, Newman was raised in London, attending elite schools and embracing evangelical Protestantism. Like all school children, he was taught that the Church of England was the true Church, having broken away, thanks to the Tudor monarchs and intellectuals such as Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker, from the Roman Catholic Church, which had been the bulwark of Christianity for fifteen hundred years. The Anglicans retained much of the liturgy and rituals of the Catholics, but substituted English for Latin in the service, scripture, and writings. Over time they kept the Creed and the sacraments, but they rejected the veneration of the saints and the Virgin and saw the Body and Blood as symbolic. Primarily, they rejected the pope and pronounced him the Antichrist.

Newman, attending Oxford then becoming a tutor, became a High Church Anglican, was ordained a deacon then a priest, and served as a vicar and had his own parish. By the time he was in his early thirties, he became concerned over changes in England that were weakening the power and authority of Anglicanism. He believed the Church was giving into the forces of modernity in England. At this time, under the leadership of Newman and others, the Oxford Movement began.

In some respects, the Oxford Movement of the 1830s anticipated the concerns that led to Vatican I. The thinkers of the movement, led by Newman, believed that the traditions of the Church Fathers were being sacrificed to the new god of Reason, a product of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Newman had made a special study of the writings of the Church Fathers and believed fervently in Apostolic Succession, and that in England only the Anglicans (rather than the Nonconformists) had benefited from the laying on of hands that went all the way back to Christ and His Apostles. Unknowingly, he was beginning the process of abandoning Anglicanism for Roman Catholicism.

During the 1830s, Newman took the lead in a series of articles, ninety in total, that examined the current situation of the Anglican Church in England. These were called Tracts for Our Times. An early leader in the Tract Movement was Richard Hurrell Froude, who before his untimely death was slowly turning to Catholicism. Froude, Newman wrote in his Apologia, impressed Newman with his ideas on tradition as the basis for Christianity, the belief in the influence of the Virgin, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the reality of miracles, and the influence of the saints. Newman records:

[Froude] made me look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence.

Early on in his transformation, Newman began to have a feeling for the “Primeval Mystery” and “the movement of my Spiritual Mother.” He believed that Liberalism would spell the death of Anglicanism. He felt that “there was something greater than the Established Church, and that that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic.” Part of this growing affinity with Rome was his belief that Dogma must preside over Reason in Church affairs, that there is wisdom in the past that surpasses the great minds of the present. The ancient Roman Catholic Church was the mother of tradition that bore the children Latin Catholicism, Greek Catholicism, and Anglo-Catholicism.

His statement in Tract 90 was something of a declaration of independence from Anglicanism:

Our Prayer Book is acknowledged on all hands to be of Catholic origin, our [39] articles also, the offspring of an uncatholic age, are, through GOD’S good providence, to say the least, not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by those who aim at being catholic in heart and doctrine.

Intellectually, by 1840, Newman was ready to reject Anglicanism for Catholicism, but emotionally he still had the old prejudices with him. Indulgences and Purgatory had been long derided by Protestants. But even more, Protestants despised popery, for it was the papacy that Protestants had for centuries made into an archenemy of all things Christian. But as Newman realized that the antiquity and tradition of Roman Catholicism was what made it so necessary to embrace, he realized as well that the Church, from the beginning, had had a Vicar of Christ at its head.

Ultimately, Newman had to embrace the whole, even if some of the parts were concerning. While reading the Fathers of the Church, he discovered that Catholicism, more than Anglicanism or any other Protestant belief, provided the most probable basis for truth. He believed in God, Christianity, and Catholicism on probabilities; religion is based in probabilities, not absolute certainty, and these probabilities he believed in provided the amount of certainty that he needed.

Moreover, the intellectualism of the Church Fathers far surpassed the reasoned propositions of Richard Hooker on why the King should be head of the Church. The Anglican Church had become more a ritualistic parade and the mouthing of words to a precise if unclear formula rather than a place of love and emotion and thought. Newman needed the thought, the philosophy, and the traditions by which he could come to know a personal God who cared for him. He proclaimed, in short:

I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing Being in my conscience.

His conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism brought John Henry Newman to a place of integration, in which he could believe exactly what he professed and what he did—both during Mass and at all other times.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us, for our belief, and our practice of the Faith!

Image via Wikimedia Commons

In a parable this Sunday, Jesus describes a great wedding feast. Those who get invitations would be wise to ask: “What should I wear?”

Gospel (Read Mt. 22:1-14)

In the last of three parables in this portion of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus continues to describe the kingdom of God for “the chief priests and elders.” Now He compares it to “a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” We should be able to recognize this as an allegory of salvation history right away. It begins with what we usually think of as the end of the story of God and man. 

The “wedding feast” is a reference to the ultimate union of God’s people with Christ in heaven. There we will know an eternal communion of joy that is anticipated even now in every happy earthly wedding celebration (remember, Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding). Beyond that, it is actually experienced, as a foretaste, in the Eucharist, a pledge of that future joy. 

However, as good as this sounds, Jesus describes a problem: the invited guests “refused to come.” This refers to the Jews who, although they were God’s covenant people and the first to be invited to the Messianic banquet, became indifferent to Him. The king sent his servants again to the invited guests, but that stirred up hostility among them, and they murdered the servants. Here’s where the story takes a surprising twist.

“The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.” No one would argue the justice of this punishment, considering how long-suffering the king had been in his attempts to bring the guests to his home for a resplendent feast. In this, Jesus is announcing a future judgment on Jerusalem for refusing to believe He was God’s Messiah. Therefore, the king sent out more servants (the apostles) to “invite to the feast whomever you find.” Ultimately, the king’s hall was filled with guests, “bad and good alike.”

Here Jesus describes how the Gospel would be preached to all people, Gentiles and Jews, and many would gladly respond to enter a new covenant with God. This looks like a happy ending, yet the story now takes another turn.

“But when the king came in to meet the guests, he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.” In those days, kings gave regal garments to those whom they chose to favor (see Gen. 45:22; Est. 6:8). Not to wear it would, of course, be an act of great disrespect and insult to the king. When questioned, the man without his garment had no answer; there were no words that would explain away his behavior. He was thrust out of the party. 

So, even though the invitation to the feast had gone out far and wide, to both “bad and good,” there was still an individual response that each guest had to make to the king. What did Jesus mean in this part of the parable?

Jesus wants to make it as clear as He can that an invitation to the joy of eternal communion with God, offered in the Gospel and received in baptism, calls for a personal response. Ethnic identity (the Jews then) or attendance at church (Christians now) doesn’t automatically guarantee a place at the banqueting table. We will need to be wearing appropriate attire, provided by God Himself, which is a metaphor for the righteous deeds that accompany faith (see Rev. 19:7-8). Our good works are our personal response to the grace given to us in Christ. 

“Many are invited,” says Jesus, “but few are chosen.” This was simply another way of saying what He frequently says in the Gospels: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father” (Mt. 7:21; see also Mt. 25:31-46).

Possible response: Heavenly Father, I never want to turn a deaf ear to You when You invite me to draw close. Please heal my hearing.

First Reading (Read Is. 25:6-10a)

Here is a beautiful prophecy of the joy God has always intended for His people. Isaiah, writing around 700 B.C., delivered it as a word of hope, because Judah was about to undergo a terrible chastisement for her covenant infidelity. Nevertheless, God promises “a feast of rich food and choice wines” for “all peoples,” a foreshadowing of the Eucharist and the nuptial feast of the Lamb.

Where will this feast take place? 

It will happen “on this mountain,” which is, first, the city of Jerusalem, and then the heavenly Jerusalem of eternity. See how this characteristic of double fulfillment pervades the whole prophecy. Isaiah speaks of the destruction of a “veil.” That happened at the time of the Crucifixion, when the “veil” guarding the Holy of Holies in the Temple was torn from top to bottom (Mt. 27:50-51a). It will also happen at the end of time, when there will be an “unveiling” of reality itself (the word for “unveiling” or “revelation” in Greek is apokalypsis).

There is a promise that God “will wipe away the tears from every face.” Think of Jesus saying to Mary Magdalene on Resurrection Day: “Woman, why are you weeping?” (Jn. 20:15) The Book of Revelation assures us that one day, tears will end forever (see Rev. 21:1-4). 

Finally, there is a promise that God’s people will “behold our God, to Whom we looked to save us. This is the LORD for Whom we looked.” It was John the Baptist who first announced the fulfillment of this prophecy when he called out, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (Jn. 1:29) It was St. John the Evangelist who wrote about its fulfillment in his Gospel: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, has made Him known” (Jn. 1:18). And, when time ends, St. John also tells us: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men” (Rev. 21:3).

When we read this Old Testament prophecy, we can better understand Jesus’ parable. Our “king” has long desired to invite His people to a joyous feast. Israel understood herself to be espoused to God (see Is. 54:5; Jer. 3:20; Hos. 2:14-20), so a “wedding feast” with Him was not surprising. The chief priests and elders who heard Jesus that day should have known that to refuse the invitation was to lose their inheritance.

No one should ever be indifferent to a banquet like this.

Possible response: Heavenly Father, thank You for this promise of joy that lasts forever and the end of all tears. Give me patience to wait.

Psalm (Read Ps. 23:1-6)

This psalm is so familiar to us. How is it connected to our other readings? It is the heartfelt praise of one who accepts God’s invitation to communion and fellowship with Him. It details for us why this invitation overshadows anything else that calls to us in life. When we answer God’s call, we have refreshment, guidance, and courage. 

The banquet table God sets for us is secure even in the presence of our enemies. God’s goodness and kindness are our constant companions. The psalm should stir us up to eagerly accept God’s invitation and to say with the psalmist: “I shall live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.”

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings. Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read Phil. 4:12-14, 19-20)

Our readings have been about an invitation to communion with God. That can sound ethereal and mysterious. The epistle gives us concrete understanding of what communion with Christ actually does in our lives now. 

St. Paul tells us that he has “learned the secret” of not relying on his circumstances for contentment. This is a treasured lesson! What is the “secret”? It is knowing, from our personal relationship with Christ, that we “can do all things in Him Who strengthens” us. 

The invitation to communion with God, now and for eternity, means to be firmly planted in this conviction. No wonder St. Paul says, “To our God and Father, glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Possible response: Lord Jesus, please be my strength today. Remind me that my contentment always lies in You.

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Life is hard, and it doesn’t always go according to plan. Those moments can be filled with sweat, tears, blood, sleepless nights, anxiety, and even temptation away from hope and toward despair. While we can feel slight or crippling loneliness in such moments, the reality is that suffering, difficulties, and hardships are all things we humans experience. Yes, you will find friends’ smiles and victories on social media, but remember that the posts not shared and the events not photographed include hardships.

I have found myself in moments of prolonged suffering and difficulty throughout my adulthood. To be honest, I am still in it. Yet, I have found ever greater depths of peace and joy in this stormy sea as I learn to better surrender all to God and trust in Him. In these more recent years, my teacher has been St. John Henry Newman and his prayerful poem “Lead, Kindly Light.”

St. John Henry Newman is a saint, theologian, and the most recently declared Doctor of the Church (November 1st, 2025). Born in 1801, he wrote the poetic prayer “Lead, Kindly Light” as the fruit of his own surrender during difficulty.

It all began at the end of 1832. Newman traveled throughout Europe, even becoming more exposed to the Catholic Faith during his Anglican years. While in Sicily, he nearly died due to illness. Shortly afterwards, he penned “Lead, Kindly Light.”

Looking back on it now, it is clear that part of God’s plan that he speaks of was to one day go from being an Anglican priest to a Catholic cardinal. His entrance into the fullness of the Catholic Church came at great cost to Newman: his job, friends, other relationships, and his notable status within British society. This would be just one of many seasons in his life in which he would be called upon to deepen his surrender and trust.

Let’s begin reflecting on this prayer by looking at its second stanza or verse. Here he recognizes that he hasn’t always trusted the Lord, “nor prayed that Thou / Shouldst lead me on.” Newman has the humility to recognize that he has sometimes lacked trust. This humility allows him to pinpoint some of the causes: “Pride ruled my will” and his disordered love for the “garish day.” How often have we struggled with a pride that approaches life as centered around us and a preference for the worldly? Like Newman, we would prefer “to choose and see my path,” to be able to plan and control, but we are invited to join the saintly theologian to change our ways and pray, “but now, Lead Thou me on!”

Now looking at the first stanza of “Lead, Kindly Light,” to let go of our need to control does not mean to deny that we are still faced with challenges “amid th’ encircling gloom” and the dark night. When faced with these, we recognize that we are “far from home” in terms of how we would like things to be, but also that the challenges of this world mean we are still not yet in the fullness of our heavenly home. As we continue on this journey, surrendering our pride to God and trusting where He leads mean that we don’t need to obsess about the future—a temptation that the fictional demon Screwtape encouraged in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Simply saying “yes” to God at this moment is enough. In Newman’s beautiful words, “I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.”

Not denying suffering, difficulty, or the unknown, Newman shows us that we can still be renewed in our faith, hope, and love for God. We can wake up to see the ways in which the Lord has “blest” us and know two things about the future: our difficulties aren’t over, but the Lord is still with us and will lead us. With trust and surrender, this means that one day the challenges will end, the night will be gone. We will then be “home” and be reunited with our brothers and sisters of the Kindly Light, those with whom we suffered a variety of types of separation.

As Catholics we often name things by the opening words, like the “Our Father” or “Glory Be.” Yet, the technical name for “Lead, Kindly Light” is “The Pillar of the Cloud.” This title adds an extra layer of meaning. It refers to God’s gift of a pillar of cloud to lead His chosen people Israel through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. Despite the difficulties, their sins, the loss of loved ones, the unknowns, and the difficulties in trusting, God remained with them and provided them a way forward to their journey’s destination.

To pray this prayer with Newman is also to realize we are part of a much greater story, a much greater plan, with roots in Salvation History. God is inviting us into freedom from daily forms of slavery, helping us in our journey, and asking us to trust Him as he brings us through the Way, Jesus Christ (Jn. 14:6), to our heavenly “home.”

Since we travel in this Way who is Christ, as we come to grow in surrender and trust while in this world, we discover something beautifully amazing! That place of surrender and trust is a foretaste of that “home.” As St. Catherine of Sienna noted, the road to heaven is heavenly. Surely St. John Henry Newman realized this in a special way when he became Catholic in 1845 and in a fuller way when he died in 1890.

What foretaste of our heavenly home is the Kindly Lord leading us into today through surrender and trust? Perhaps to discover and receive this foretaste, we simply must begin by praying with our brother and friend, “Lead Thou me on!”

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Recently, a news article about baseball sent me down a rabbit hole of theological and philosophical thought. The article caught my attention because my late father was an avid baseball fan. He spent the last 17 years of his life on full-time disability. The last five or so years of his life he was primarily homebound and could no longer drive. He was also a marvel to modern medicine, and despite the 15 medications he was taking at one time, no one could figure out why my dad spent decades being a night owl, incapable of going to bed before 6:00 am.

All this time on his own at night gave him plenty of time for prayer, philosophical reading, music, and watching baseball. He was a San Francisco Giants fan before he died—having switched away from his own father’s team, the Atlanta Braves. Baseball is a multi-generational pastime in my family. It is something that reminds me of my dad.

The news article caught my attention because it was discussing how Major League Baseball instituted robot umpires in the 2026 season. I immediately texted my friend Kevin Wells, who is an avid baseball fan and former MLB reporter, for his thoughts. He said his whole family had been debating it all season. We were unsettled by it. There is something about the rhythm and dance of baseball that a robotic presence destroys. I would argue that instant replay cameras do the exact same thing.

Why did a simple article about baseball send me contemplating deeper truths and what it means to be human? It is because the more we mechanize everything, including our favorite past times, I am convinced we lose more of our God-given humanity. We have abdicated our relationships to virtual social media networks that require nothing of us and lead us to egotism and self-centeredness.

There is only manufactured and marketed suffering in the virtual world. Everything is digitally crafted by the algorithm to keep us in a constant state of manufactured rage. I have called it rage porn for years. The anger or sorrow that we experience in the face of the world’s suffering is from the safety of our comfortable reading chair or home office on the screen in front of us. It requires very little of us in reality.

Real human relationships require us to look into the eyes of the suffering, to hold their hand, and to sit in the uncomfortable silence and powerlessness of another’s agony and death. Our friends and family don’t need fake digital likes that provide temporary dopamine hits. They need our human presence. Digital relationships let us get off the hook of having to deal with real human beings who have very real needs.

How is this connected to baseball robot umpires? Every time we cede ground to machines, we lose a sense of human presence. At its root, all of it is a grasp at power. We want to control everything. We can even control our relationships because everyone is at the mercy of everyone else. We can shut people off or cancel them with the click of a button. We control our “world” because it is entirely digital. We no longer have to deal with the messiness of actual human relationships and errors. We no longer have to love in the agonizingly difficult manner we are called to as Christians. We no longer have to be crucified. Love is the Cross, but we’ve jettisoned the Cross for the cold counterfeit that is the disincarnate Machine, as Paul Kingsnorth and others call it. We’ve swapped the hard wood of the cross for the hardness of rare earth minerals.

We desire control so much that we have even destroyed our own leisure and past times. Baseball (or any other sport) was created for enjoyment and healthy competition. It requires skill, talent, and a set of rules that are enforced by human beings, in this case, umpires. Control and the desire to win has taken over the initial purpose of the game. We can no longer tolerate fallible human beings making calls. Instead, we “must” grasp at nihilistic—Kevin joked about my use of nihilism in relation to baseball in our text thread—power to dominate others so that we come out on top. We are incapable of tolerating that we might lose because of a bad call. We can no longer tolerate our own humanity or the humanity of others.

Are bad calls all that bad? Maybe in the moment, but they also serve as great stories that last multiple generations and as an opportunity for community to come together. The umpire made a bad call, and he must live with that and so does everyone else. This is one of the beautiful things that makes baseball human. It is good and bad plays that make the game enjoyable.

When the shortstop misses the ball, and the runner makes it to second base, the game is interesting. A human error is what makes that play possible. A pitcher throws strikes and balls. Some of them are well executed, and others are not. That’s a part of what makes the game entertaining. Umpires see those pitches and make calls. Some of the calls are terrible, but they make the game interesting and human. Mistakes and bad calls are a part of all human endeavors.

When we take the humanity out of everything, we end up in a very dangerous place. We become incapable of enjoying the limitations of our fallen humanity, and we start grasping at control and power to the point of controlling and ultimately hurting other people. We lose sight of our humanity and the humanity of others. It would be easy to dismiss my alarmism as extreme since I am talking about baseball, but dangerous situations always arise slowly in the beginning.

It came out recently that scientists are performing chimera studies where they create human neuron cells in order to merge them with various processing technologies. Combining neuron cells is apparently considerably more efficient than the chips required to run AI systems and would require less data centers. Catholics should be absolutely disgusted by this practice. In fact, we have a moral obligation to fight against it.

I’d argue we should be opposed to massive data centers using up incredibly high amounts of natural resources, including our drinking water. I live in the state that has the most data centers in the country. We have somewhere between 300 to 400, with more being built, including a 1 billion dollar Google data center that is attempting to move directly into my area and use the reservoir that houses our drinking water while we are in the middle of a severe drought.

My point is that we live in an age when everything is being dehumanized and mechanized. If we can’t enjoy a baseball game without a robotic umpire to fall back on when we don’t like a call (I’m aware that “robot” is a misnomer), then we are losing sight of true human leisure and how being human means making mistakes. It is not that big of a leap to go from robotic umpire to human neurons firing machines. They are all part of the same broken metaphysical, teleological, and moral framework that is guiding the people implementing artificial intelligence and technology in every facet of our lives.

As Catholics, we have an obligation to slow down and deeply consider each new technology that is being introduced into our lives. We must stop jumping on every bandwagon and waving away small changes as if they are nothing. If we don’t think deeply about what is happening and start pushing back, then we will find ourselves in a dark and dehumanized world that we helped usher in. We will have chosen Barabbas instead of Christ. We should be asking ourselves: Why are we abdicating everything to machines? and What are the consequences of continuing down this path?

My dad didn’t live to see robotic umpires added to Major League Baseball. I know he and I would have had a lengthy philosophical and theological discussion about it. I’m thankful he didn’t live to see it. My father suffered tremendously in his lifetime, and baseball was an opportunity to simply enjoy a game that is fully human. He didn’t like the instant replay challenge system either. We should be embracing our humanity with all our sufferings, faults, disappointments, and imperfections because that is where the Lord can redeem us. He can’t save people that are only concerned with control and power. We won’t let Him.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Why Bioethics Cannot Survive Without a True Vision of the Human Person

One of the strangest features of contemporary Western culture is that we speak constantly about dignity while often being deeply uncertain about who possesses it. Our public language is full of appeals to human rights, equality, non-discrimination, inclusion, and respect. These words dominate politics, medicine, law, education, and international declarations. Few societies have ever spoken so much about the dignity of the human person.

And yet, at the very same time, we routinely deny protection to whole classes of vulnerable human beings: the unborn child, the embryo in the laboratory, the severely disabled infant, the elderly person with advanced dementia, the patient in a persistent vegetative state, the suffering person tempted by assisted suicide. We insist that dignity is universal, but then quietly redefine the conditions for belonging to the circle of those who are fully protected.

This is the contradiction Charles C. Camosy addresses in Losing Our Dignity. His argument is not simply that modern bioethics reaches bad conclusions on abortion, euthanasia, disability, and end-of-life care. His deeper claim is that modern bioethics has suffered an anthropological collapse. It has detached dignity from what the human being is and attached it instead to what the human being can do.

The Fragile Language of Equality

Camosy’s argument is that contemporary bioethics did not simply make a few mistaken policy judgments. It inherited the language of dignity and equality while losing the anthropology that once made such language coherent. Modern liberal culture still wants to say that every human being has equal dignity. It still wants to condemn discrimination. It still wants to protect the weak from arbitrary violence. It still wants to speak the language of universal rights.

Here Camosy’s diagnosis can be deepened by Mary Ann Glendon and Alasdair MacIntyre. As Glendon argued in Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, rights language becomes distorted when it is severed from duties, responsibilities, communities, and the moral habits that sustain a humane society. A culture can speak endlessly about rights while forgetting the obligations that make rights intelligible and the virtues that make them livable.

MacIntyre makes a related point in After Virtue: modern moral discourse often consists of fragments of older traditions, detached from the larger account of human nature, virtue, and the good life that once gave those fragments coherence. We still use words such as dignity, justice, equality, autonomy, and compassion, but we often lack a shared understanding of what man is and what he is for. The result is a culture that can affirm equality morally while denying it ontologically.

This is why the modern language of equality is so fragile. It speaks as though dignity were universal, but it often lacks the metaphysical foundation needed to defend that claim. Here Gustave Thibon is especially helpful. In What Ails Mankind?, his criticism of socialism and false egalitarianism is not merely political. It is anthropological. He sees that modern egalitarianism often begins with a Christian intuition—the equal worth of persons—but then detaches that intuition from the created order, from hierarchy, from concrete bonds, and from God. Once equality is severed from reality, it does not produce communion. It produces abstraction, envy, resentment, and the leveling of persons according to ideological categories.

Christian equality does not mean that all persons possess the same capacities, roles, gifts, intelligence, health, strength, or social function. It means that every human being possesses the same fundamental dignity before God. False egalitarianism, by contrast, tries to erase real differences while quietly introducing new and more dangerous inequalities. It abolishes visible hierarchies only to replace them with hidden ones: the powerful over the weak, the functional over the dependent, the autonomous over the voiceless, the expert over the vulnerable.

This is why the modern language of equality can so easily become gnostic. Emanuele Samek Lodovici saw this clearly in Metamorfosi della gnosi: Quadri della dissoluzione contemporanea. Modern gnosis is not merely an old religious heresy revived in antiquarian form. It is a recurring temptation of the human spirit: hostility toward the given human condition, impatience with finitude, and the dream of remaking man and society according to an ideological image.

This gnostic impulse refuses the limits and givenness of created reality. It dreams of a humanity liberated from nature, dependence, hierarchy, sex, family, suffering, and even death. It promises redemption through knowledge, technique, political reconstruction, or cultural revolution. Yet when equality is no longer grounded in the truth of the human person as created by God, it becomes unstable. It may proclaim universal dignity in theory, while excluding in practice those who do not fit the desired image of autonomous, productive, self-defining man.

This returns us to Camosy’s central concern. If every human being has equal dignity, then that dignity must be rooted in something every human being equally possesses. It cannot be rooted in intelligence, independence, productivity, consciousness, autonomy, or social usefulness, because these qualities are not equally possessed. They differ from person to person. They can increase or decrease. They can be lost through injury, illness, age, or disability.

If dignity depends on autonomy, then the dependent have less dignity. If dignity depends on consciousness, then the unconscious have less dignity. If dignity depends on rational performance, then those with cognitive impairment have less dignity. If dignity depends on being wanted, then the unwanted have less dignity.

This is why the unborn child, the disabled infant, the dependent elderly person, the patient with dementia, and the dying person become so vulnerable in modern bioethics. They reveal the scandal of creatureliness. They remind us that man is not self-created, self-sufficient, or infinitely malleable. A genuinely Christian anthropology does not seek salvation by escaping the human condition, but by receiving it as created, wounded, redeemed, and destined for glory.

This is why modern culture can affirm equality morally while denying it ontologically, basing that denial on accidental differences. It speaks beautifully about rights, equality, and dignity, but forgets the duties, virtues, communities, and metaphysical foundation that make such language meaningful. It says all persons are equal, but then defines “person” in a way that excludes some human beings. We are equal as persons, not as bundles of capacities. Our dignity and rights are metaphysical, not functional. They are rooted in what the human being is, not in what the human being can presently do.

The Person–Human Being Distinction

This is where the abstract crisis of equality becomes concrete in bioethics. At the heart of much contemporary bioethics lies a dangerous distinction between “human beings” and “persons.” A human being, in this framework, is simply a biological member of the species Homo sapiens. A person, by contrast, is said to be someone who possesses certain psychological or cognitive capacities: self-awareness, rationality, autonomy, consciousness, the ability to form preferences, or the ability to participate in relationships in a recognizable way. Peter Singer expresses this distinction with characteristic bluntness in the third edition of Practical Ethics, especially in chapters 4 through 7, where he argues that membership in the species Homo sapiens does not by itself confer the moral status associated with personhood. On this view, beings with rationality, self-awareness, and future-oriented preferences have a stronger claim than beings who lack these capacities. The result is that some nonhuman animals may be treated as “persons,” while some human beings—including infants or those with profound cognitive disabilities—may not.

At first, this may sound sophisticated. It seems to allow ethicists to distinguish between mere biological life and the fully developed moral subject. But the consequences are devastating. If not every human being is a person, then not every human being has equal moral worth. Some human beings may be treated as non-persons, partial persons, potential persons, or former persons. This is why embryos can be destroyed for research, unborn children can be eliminated through abortion, infants with disabilities can be treated as lives of diminished value, and patients with advanced dementia can be spoken of as though the person has disappeared while the body remains.

Camosy’s critique is powerful because he sees that this is not merely a problem of policy. It is a problem of anthropology. Once dignity is tied to function, dignity becomes conditional. Once dignity becomes conditional, equality becomes incoherent. This is one of the ironies of modernity. We cannot stop speaking about dignity, and yet we increasingly lack the metaphysical ground necessary to protect it. Something of this ambiguity can already be seen, in seed form, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s famous Oration on the Dignity of Man. Pico did not simply deny the Christian tradition, but he helped shift the accent. Human dignity begins to be described less in terms of man’s creation in the image of God and more in terms of man’s indeterminacy, freedom, and capacity for self-fashioning.

The irony is striking. We move from Pico’s emphasis on man’s dignity qua man—dignity because he is man—in a work that was, in its own time, viewed with deep suspicion precisely because it seemed to separate man’s dignity from his relation to God as imago Dei. Four hundred years later, we find that man is losing the very dignity modernity claimed to exalt. Once dignity is detached from God, it must be grounded elsewhere: in freedom, autonomy, self-expression, power, or self-fashioning. But these foundations cannot bear the weight.

This logic reaches a new intensity in transhumanism and posthumanism. It is not only that the likeness of God is obscured when man is detached from grace; now even the givenness of human nature itself becomes unstable. Nick Bostrom, one of the leading defenders of transhumanism, makes clear that the goal is not merely therapeutic healing, but the possibility of moving beyond present human limits toward a posthuman condition. Man is no longer received as a creature whose nature is to be perfected by grace, virtue, and communion with God. He becomes a project to be modified, surpassed, or replaced.

This is why the modern exaltation of dignity eventually makes dignity fragile. If dignity is attached chiefly to freedom, autonomy, self-creation, or self-expression, then those who cannot exercise these powers become vulnerable. We continue to speak about dignity, but we no longer know how to defend it when consciousness fades, autonomy disappears, or dependence becomes total. Dignity needs to be anchored in something more stable than human capacity. It must be rooted in God.

The Christian vision is different. The human being does not become dignified by achieving consciousness, autonomy, productivity, self-expression, or technological enhancement. The human being possesses dignity because he or she is created in the image of God. Dignity is not an award for successful performance. It is not a social recognition granted by the strong to the weak. It is not a legal fiction. It is rooted in the very being of the human person as created, loved, and called by God.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on Bioethics & Culture by Fr. Francesco Giordano, tackling the challenging moral issues of our day.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Q&A WITH MYSTIC ALICJA LENCZEWSKA, PART 6

We live in a world full of stimuli that feed negative thoughts. Social media, music, movies, and advertising inundate us with images and messages that can contaminate our minds. Most of us pay no attention to them at all. Sadly, those who have deliberately embraced evil even take delight in them. Only a handful of Christians who truly care about their salvation try to resist them, but unfortunately, they usually do so without much success.

Bad thoughts can take various forms: thoughts of pride, thoughts of despair, thoughts of hatred, impure thoughts; and finally, blasphemous thoughts—the most difficult to combat because they originate from our adversary.

Fighting intrusive thoughts is often like tilting at windmills. The harder we try to defeat them by our own efforts, the stronger they seem to become. Relying on our own strength inevitably leads to failure. But when we humbly acknowledge our weakness and offer it to Jesus, then we make room for God’s grace to work.

Let us now explore what God advised Alicja in this regard.

THE POWER OF GOOD AND EVIL THOUGHTS

(Friday, August 8, 1986)

† Be careful with your thoughts. Your growth and your following of Me depend on them.

Good or evil begins with a thought. Thought has creative power, and although you may not realize it, your thoughts are constantly creating either good or evil.

They create good when they contribute something constructive to your actions toward yourself or others in the realm of spiritual growth.

They create evil when they are empty and purposeless, when they consume time that could be used creatively. In that case, they lead to general laziness and spiritual stagnation.

A greater evil is dwelling mentally on and taking delight in things, people, or your own ambitions.

Such thoughts hinder your response to My call. They lead you onto another path, a side road. They draw you farther and farther away from Me. This is worse than mere stagnation.

The worst thoughts are those that contain doubt and rebellion—rebellion against situations, tasks, and people. Such rebellion is rebellion against Me, for I work through situations, events, and people.

Rebellion gives rise to conflict, and conflict is the most fertile form of evil—it awakens evil in others. It is a turning in the opposite direction.

The beginning of doubt and rebellion is judgment.

Your human judgments are flawed because they are based on your own measure. No human being is a standard, nor can anyone regard himself as the measure of anything or anyone.

I am the Standard of all truth and holiness. My judgment alone is true. The only positive way of judging is to use Me as the standard. This, too, was one reason for My human life among you.

More important, however, if you wish to teach others, is to teach by the example of your own attitude, conduct, wisdom, gentleness, and the other virtues whose pattern I gave you, rather than by words. Instruction through words always carries the risk of not being confirmed by actions. And the lack of such confirmation—especially when actions contradict words—gives rise to doubt and rebellion in others.

And that is the worst thing of all.

† You should ask forgiveness for thoughts that are the beginning of wrongful actions. Let your thoughts remain with Me; let them be filled with prayer—then there will be no room in them for evil.

If your thoughts are filled with good, evil will not arise within them. It is better to fill them with good than later to waste energy uprooting evil after it has grown and taken root.

Remain close to Me, and together we will build good thoughts within you. If you offer them to Me, I will see to it that goodness grows and flourishes in them.

THE DEVIL TRIES TO PLANT EVIL THOUGHTS IN OUR MINDS

(Friday, December 24, 1993)

† My child, quiet your heart and look at Me. Restrain and drive away all the thoughts that assault your mind and destroy the peace of your heart.

Do not be afraid of them, and do not dwell on them. They are not your thoughts.

They are the arrows of the evil spirit, who seeks to inject his poison into your soul through your mind and through your heart.

You already know this, for I have taught you to recognize the breath of evil that seeks to surround and ensnare you. You know that a great war has been waged against your soul, and that further attacks will come against your mind, your memory, your imagination, and your emotions.

Do not be afraid of this. Be watchful, and do not allow any evil thought to remain within you or to find an echo in your heart.

My Name is a powerful weapon. It brings calm. With it return peace, gentleness, love, and joy.

Live in the present moment.

SUPERNATURAL GIFT OF SILENCE

(Thursday, February 2, 1995)

† My child, if your mind is filled with a flurry of thoughts and your heart with a storm of emotions, then struggle against them through active prayer expressed in words and through fervent praise and thanksgiving, especially for hardship and suffering. Ask for strength and perseverance, for the ability to accept everything and to offer it with purity of heart.

If, however, you sense that the grace of silence is coming upon your soul, that My loving gaze rests upon you, then be silent. Quiet your mind and the emotions of your heart and remain absorbed in Me. Immerse yourself in My gaze, so that it may embrace you completely and penetrate you through and through.

Remain in the silence of wonder, so as not to lose anything of the holiness of this moment, of the grace that has been given to you. This is the greatest grace and the most exalted state of your soul immersed in Me, a state that is to illumine the time that follows […]

Now is prayer—the sacred time of immersion and absorption in Me, of delighting in Me with trusting, joyful peace.

This is the true state of your soul, the state for which it was created and in which its existence—your existence—is fulfilled: the seed of what is to come when I draw you out of the bondage of earthly life in the flesh.

What could be more important or more beautiful than such a holy moment of silence in Me—a silence that is a hymn, a fragrance, a warmth, a harmony of colors, and the radiance of Love?

Like dawn over the Sea of Galilee, when, through the morning mist and blue sky, rays of light streamed from My hands—peace and love poured out upon My children—as I allowed you to behold it.

From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile. (Mk. 7:21-23)

During this month of October, dedicated to Our Lady and the Holy Rosary, let us turn to her for help. May she who crushes the head of the ancient serpent guide us in the battle for a pure mind.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on a twentieth-century Polish mystic, entitled Q&A with Mystic Alicja Lenczewska. Follow along here, and catch up on previous articles on Alicja’s writings here.

Author’s Note: Excerpts taken from Alicja Lenczewska, A Word of Instruction (Słowo Pouczenia), Testymony, (Świadectwo) published by Wydawnictwo Agape (Poznań, 2016).

Image via Wikimedia Commons

We live in a world where we can access as much information as possible, get answers at Alexa’s command, and connect with others across the globe instantly. We can have almost anything appear on our doorstep at the press of a button. Yet with such immediate access, do we feel accomplished and fulfilled?

Pope Leo XIV answers that question. In his recent and first encyclical, he said, “When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion” (Magnifica Humanitas 112). How can we optimize our lived experience through relationship and communion?

Benedictines may hold the answer to meaningful relationships and communion.

Benedictines are named after St. Benedict of Nursia, born around the year 480. He lived in a world crumbling into disunity. Rome was sacked for the second time in 455, and the last Roman emperor was deposed in 476. He witnessed the demise of the social and economic structures of the Roman Empire. He retreated from a deteriorating world to find God in the cave, and his Rule, shaped by his lived experience, became the guiding ethos of Western Monasticism. That Rule remains relevant today, teaching us to listen intently, to practice the liturgy of work, and to be silent together.

The Art of True Listening

“Listen” is the first word in the Rule of St. Benedict. If we seek a worthwhile life, we must listen intently to a God who loves us. That special type of listening is called listening with the ears of the heart.

Benedict gives many examples of how to listen with the ears of the heart. One masterful way he does this is by saying that senior members of the community should listen to what the young members have to offer: “the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger” (RB 3.3). Though a terribly new idea in his time, it shows Benedict’s desire to foster mutual listening, no matter your position in the community.

This dialogue is important today. We have to make room in our lives, not for efficiency, but for communion. Take time to sit down with someone, let them tell you their story, and listen to understand. Not every meet-up needs to be processed information or a sales pitch, but moments that move our hearts for the other. Pope Leo XIV calls this “wasting time” together. He says:

Indeed, dialogue is an ordinary part of human life…It involves acquiring an attitude that seeks to forge bonds of fraternity built on listening, an open demeanor, making time for each other and even wasting time together. For if we experience authentic encounters with others, with those who are different, strangers and migrants, it becomes much more difficult even to imagine war. (Magnifica Humanitas 220)

Work in its Right Place: The Liturgy of Work

Along with listening with the ears of the heart, Benedict reminds us of the value of work.

If there is a mystique about the Benedictines, it is their idea of stability. They stay in one place for their entire lives. Unlike the Franciscans, Dominicans, or the Society of Jesus, Benedictines are not sent all over the world with a particular mission. They have only one mission, in one place, so their lives take deep root there.

What is their one mission? Work and prayer, or as I like to put it: the Liturgy of Work. The Benedictines exist to praise God five times a day in their monastic choir stall. They do this together. From that place of prayer, they move toward work in a structured time governed by a spiritual communal heartbeat that never fades or slows down.

Work varies from monastery to monastery. Some monks teach at seminaries, while others make honey, and still others tend cattle on the farm. Yet, no matter their task, the monastic is always at prayer, finding God in every action, every mistake, and every restart. The Benedictines remind us that work is given to us not solely for a paycheck, but to live fully.

No matter what our work may be, we are given it to be co-creators with God, making this world a better place through the task right in front of us, while praising God for this creativity. Pope Leo XVI says it beautifully, “Work remains a fundamental dimension of the human experience, for not only is it a means of sustenance, but it is also a context for expression, relationships and contributing to the community” (Magnifica Humanitas 154).

The Need for Silence

Listening and working together reach their apex in another striking idea of the Rule: the need for silence. If we live life well, we will study and learn many things. In the excitement of telling others many things, we must esteem silence. Silence does two things: it prevents us from using our tongue to speak ill of others and, equally important, it reminds us that we are always learning. St. Benedict said, “Speaking and teaching are the master’s task; the disciple is to be silent and listen” (RB 6.6). When we are silent, God slows us down and waits for us to be still before He speaks.

We have to carve out time for silence. Maybe that means waking up a little earlier and not grabbing our devices so fast, or perhaps it means getting out of bed right away and going for a walk around the neighborhood before sunrise. We have to take this desire for silence to prayer and see where the Holy Spirit leads us to esteem silence in an overloaded, noisy world. T.S. Elliot addresses the consequence of the absence of silence. In his poem Choruses from “The Rock,” he states:

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

Many of us desire a meaningful and rewarding life. The Rule of St. Benedict is a hidden treasure being reconsidered as its 1,500th birthday approaches in 2029. All those years ago, Benedict spoke to the many generations that came after him of the value of listening with the ears of the heart, prayer and work, and the need to esteem silence. Through his prayers, may we all journey together to everlasting life!

Author’s Note: Want to dive deeper into Benedictine listening, work, and silence? Consider buying my debut book, The Upside-Down Kingdom: Living in Holiness and Sanity Through the Wisdom of St. Benedict (Wipf & Stock Publishers). Bearing the imprimatur of Bishop Jaime Soto of the Diocese of Sacramento and an endorsement on the back of the book by Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, this book offers a practical perspective from a husband, father, and lay professional minister, interwoven with cherished memoirs of my time living next to the monks of Mount Angel Abbey. This book is dedicated to these men in gratitude for etching their apostolate in my heart.

You can best support my writing ministry by buying it here on my website. For expedient delivery, you can purchase this book instantly on Amazon. Blessed be God forever. 

Photo by Mario La Pergola on Unsplash