Perfect Joy
ONCE when St. Francis was coming from Perugia to Santa Maria degli Angeli with Friar Leo in the winter, and the very great cold vexed him sore, he called Friar Leo, who was going before,…
Month: July 2025
Today’s One-Liner (#210)
Where there is hatred, let me sow love. –St. Francis of Assisi
From Rules to Virtue
Reimagining the moral life through the prism of the Beatitudes takes us from rules to virtues: from a rule-centered idea of morality to a virtue-centered idea of morality. The basic question changes from “How far…
Today’s One-Liner (#209)
Is not virtue the health of the soul? –A.G. Sertillanges, O.P. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary Ryan
Celerity of the Saints
St Francis Solano, when under the impetus of love, would move like the wind so that no one could keep pace with him. On Christmas, a friar caught sight of him rushing along carrying some…
Today’s One-Liner (#208)
Be gentled with others, but stern towards yourself. –Saint Teresa of Avila, cited in Stephen Clissold, The Wisdom of the Spanish Mystics
Living Examples
The most notable new female community was the Missionaries of Charity, originally founded by an Albanian nun, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta (d. 1997), to work especially with the poorest of the poor in India—the abandoned…
Today’s One-Liner (#207)
We have the power to let the current pass through us and use us to produce the light of the world or we can refuse to be used and allow the darkness to spread. –Mother…
Conscience Versus Power
In spite of all the terrible executions, the indescribable tragedies, and the unrepented brutalities, the White Rose leaflets made their way throughout Germany and occupied Europe, bringing hope into the cells of condemned prisoners and…
Today’s One-Liner (#206)
Over the years they had learned to dissemble, learned how to look cool and distant, how to keep their faces inscrutable, their eyes blank, how to submit to security checks without trembling. –Annette Dumbach and…